The European Solidarity party believes the Friday searches conducted on the premises of the Bohdan Motors corporation owned by Petro Poroshenko and his associates are provocation.
“The European Solidarity party has stated that on the last day before the election we are seeing the orchestrated show aiming at discrediting our political force and its leader. We emphasize that the investigative actions conducted today have nothing to do with European Solidarity and Petro Poroshenko,” the party said.
The party said it has always supported the efficient work of the anti-corruption authorities, but it should not be politically motivated.
On Friday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) under the procedural direction from prosecutors of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) began searching the premises owned by the Bogdan Motors corporation, including the Fifth Element sports club based in Kyiv.
“The investigative actions are sanctioned and are being conducted as part of the investigation of large-scale embezzlement of the state property by officials of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2015- 2018. According to the investigators, the officials illegally added specialized motor vehicles into the state defense order and purchased it at inflated prices. The crime was preliminarily qualified under the Part 5 of the Article 191 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code,” the NABU press service said on Facebook on Friday.
The NABU has been investigating this case since April 2018.
According to the unified register of legal entities and individuals, the ultimate beneficiaries of the Fifth Element sports club are fifth Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko owning 55% of its shares, Verkhovna Rada member Ihor Kononenko with 35 percent of shares, and newly appointed Bogdan corporation head and former National Security and Defense Council First Deputy Secretary Oleh Hladkovsky holding 10 percent of shares.
