You're reading: State Investigations Bureau prepares suspicion for Poroshenko, requests lifting of immunity

The State Investigations Bureau is taking one of their 13 ongoing cases involving former President Petro Poroshenko further.

The bureau sent to the General Prosecutor’s Office a notice of suspicion in the case alleging that Poroshenko meddled in a judicial competition.

The announcement was published on the bureau’s website on Nov. 18.

The investigators also requested that the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, lift parliamentary immunity from Poroshenko, who now leads his 20-member European Solidarity party faction.

While parliament recently voted to eliminate immunity for lawmakers, the change does not come into effect until 2020.

Poroshenko previously denied any wrongdoing calling the investigations politically motivated.

Until now, Poroshenko was a witness in all the cases. According to State Investigations Bureau Chief Roman Truba, the former president didn’t show up for 15 requested interrogations.

In the Oct. 30 interview to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Truba said that Poroshenko is using his lawmaker status in order to ignore questioning, which is why they were preparing notices of suspicion in three cases.

The case in question regards the competition that selected judges to the High Council of Justice, the judiciary’s main governing body, in March-May 2019.

Poroshenko is suspected of forcibly altering or overthrowing the constitutional order or seizing state power, and abuse of authority or office.

Most of the State Investigation Bureau’s cases involving Poroshenko, including the one about the judicial competition, were opened following claims filed by Andriy Portnov, a lawyer and former deputy chief of staff under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, who left the country in 2014 after his boss was ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution.

Portnov has openly stated that his goal is to see Poroshenko behind bars.

In other cases, the former president is being investigated for the allegations of tax evasion and money laundering during both the sale of Poroshenko’s Kuznya shipyard in Kyiv, and on his role in the acquisition of the Pryamyi television channel.

The bureau also investigates Poroshenko’s alleged treason, regarding the Kerch Strait incident in November 2018, during which Russia illegally seized 24 Ukrainian sailors near Russian-occupied Crimea.