Over $35 million in assets of former MP Makeyenko arrested and transferred to ARMA
The Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) secured the seizure of funds and securities worth over $35 million belonging to a former People's Deputy of Ukraine in court.
"At the request of the prosecutors of the Prosecutor General's Office, on July 15, the court granted the request to transfer to the management of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) funds and securities totalling over $35 million, equivalent to UAH 1.5 billion, which were previously held in accounts in a Luxembourg bank and were transferred to the Asset Management Bureau of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg as part of criminal proceedings," the PGO’s website said in a statement on Friday.
The direct owner of these funds is the former People's Deputy of the 1st, 3rd-7th convocations, who was also the head of the Kyiv City State Administration, as well as a number of offshore companies controlled by him. The report does not name the person involved, however, according to the Interfax-Ukraine agency, it refers to Volodymyr Makeyenko.
"As a resident of Ukraine, he conducted secret business abroad, in particular, he controlled a number of offshore companies (including those registered in the Republic of Panama, Hong Kong, the Republic of Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands), which brought him income every year. However, the people's representative did not make mandatory tax payments to the state budget of Ukraine," the report states.
The relevant assets, which have signs of illegal origin, were seized as part of criminal proceedings on the grounds of tax evasion on a particularly large scale, which is being conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor General's Office and operational support of the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
The PGO is taking further procedural steps to establish all the circumstances of the former parliamentarian's illegal activities and to compensate the state for the losses caused as a result of the criminal offenses he committed.
