2/27/19, “Ukraine president Poroshenko accused of ‘state treason’ as rival attempts impeachment process," UK Independent, Oliver Carroll, Moscow
“Allegations of smuggling and corruption in the military sphere come a month before elections.”
“Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko has initiated impeachment proceedings against the sitting president Petro Poroshenko — a little more than a month before the two go head to head in elections.
Ms Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, made her move on the back of a new investigation that linked Mr Poroshenko’s entourage to an embezzlement scheme involving the smuggling of military spare parts from Russia.
[Image, Dec. 2016 in Ukraine with President Poroshenko and Ukraine military promising US weapons are Senators McCain, Graham, and Klobuchar over the New Year, Dec. 2016-Jan. 2017. Image above, screen shot from video…via, 2/2/2017, “Interfering in Ukraine – A Breach of U.S. Law?” viableopposition.blogspot.ca. And: 10/14/2017, “Fueling More Bloodshed in Ukraine,“ Consortium News, James W. Carden: “Nato itself had held exercises in the Black Sea and before that in and around the western borderlands of Ukraine. Who, it has to be asked here, is threatening whom?”]
(continuing): “Speaking in the Verkhovna Rada —Ukraine’s parliament — on Tuesday, Ms Tymoshenko said the findings were “consistent with state treason.”
Given the lack of time before the elections and parliamentary arithmetic which still favours the president, the move has little prospect for success.
But the scandal has hit Mr Poroshenko at a moment when he appeared to be gaining electoral momentum [a comedian still leads] — if polls are to be believed, pipping Ms Tymoshenko to second spot behind comedian Volodymyr Zelensky— and may yet decide who wins on 31 March.
For a country at war, the revelations made in the investigation are shocking enough.
The authors of the report, a group of independent Ukrainian journalists, link a close Poroshenko associate with an embezzlement scandal that eventually cost the military £7 million. [$9.2 million US dollars]
The scheme involved the selling of spare parts for tanks at three times market value. Not only this, the parts were smuggled in from Russia, a [supposedly] hostile power.
While the contracts were signed between by a 27-year-old called Ihor Hladovsky, the investigation concludes that they were in fact facilitated by his father, Oleh Hladovskiy, the deputy chair of Ukraine’s security council and key presidential ally.
Profits were siphoned away through three companies, including one that earlier belonged to the president. This, the journalists suggested, was evidence the corruption “likely went higher.”
Speaking with The Independent, journalist Denys Bihous, who led the investigation, said President Poroshenko was implicated by design.
“If he really didn’t want to know about it, then he’d find a way of not knowing about it,” he said. “But Hladkovskiy is an old, old friend. He got his government job because of this friendship.”
Sergii Leschenko, a member of parliament and a Poroshenko critic, described Mr Hladkovskiy as one of the president’s “closest associates” in politics — pointing to how the two had bought holiday homes close to each other in Marbella.
“This isn’t the first time president had been implicated in corruption,” he said, “but what gives the revelations more weight is that they come a month before elections, concern corruption in the military sphere, and involve Russia.”
According to Mr Leshchenko, still notionally a member of Mr Poroshenko’s fraction in parliament, Ms Tymoshenko’s proposal was a “fair price” for what the president had done. Mr Poroshenko “deserved not only impeachment but jail,” he said.
In a sign of the seriousness of the scandal engulfing Ukraine’s president, on Tuesday Oleh Hladkovskiy was temporarily suspended from his position on the Ukrainian Security Council.
Writing on Facebook, spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko said that Mr Poroshenko supported the suspension. He also asked law enforcement to undergo an urgent review of the information contained in the investigation.
Those concessions are unlikely to make Mr Poroshenko’s problem disappear.
On Tuesday, another presidential rival, the Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi, piled on the pressure by concurring Mr Poroshenko had committed an offence “impeachable in any other country.” But his solution was not the “PR” favoured by Ms Tymoshenko.
Instead, Ukrainians should “to declare their own impeachment on 31 March.”
Mayor Sadovyi remains a rank outsider for the presidential post, but Ms Tymoshenko on the other hand will hope her intuitive move will reverse what had up to now been a disappointing campaign. In the space of a month, the one-time poll frontrunner has seen her rating overtaken by her two main rivals — comedian Volodymyr Zelensky and now incumbent Petro Poroshenko too.
Bihous said he had few illusions about the electoral sensitivity of his work.
In the days leading up to publication, their office was conspicuously staked out by security officers, he said. They arrived in cars with replacement number-plates, “disappearing only when we approached.”
But their unwelcome presence would not get in the way of publishing a second and final part of the investigation, he said.”
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Added: “Obama-era” elites “backed the wrong man in Ukraine:”
12/5/2017, “The West Backed the Wrong Man in Ukraine,” Bloomberg View, by Leonid Bershidsky
“It’s become increasingly clear that Obama-era US politicians backed the wrong people in Ukraine. President Petro Poroshenko’s moves to consolidate his power now include sidelining the anti-corruption institutions he was forced to set up by Ukraine’s Western allies….
At this point, even the most vocal Western supporters of the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government have realized that something is wrong with Poroshenko. “President Poroshenko appears to have abandoned the fight against corruption, any ambition for economic growth, EU or IMF funding, ” economist Anders Aslund, who has long been optimistic about Ukrainian reforms, tweeted recently.”…
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Added: Additional source:
2/26/19, “Ukraine Parliament Starts Impeachment Process on President," telesurenglish.net
“Member’s of Ukraine’s parliament started the impeachment proceedings against President Petro Poroshenko….
This move came a day after BIHUS.infor, an investigative journalism unit from Kiev, released a report that revealed Poroshenko’s involvement in a money laundering scandal cover-up together with some defense officials.
The report said that the allegedly smuggled spare parts for Ukrainian army from Russia at over-inflated prices.
“This is actually assisting the enemy and destroying the Ukrainian army. This is a cognizable case. We believe this falls under Section 111 of the Criminal Code (high treason),” said Timoshenko.
The report named Oleh Hladkovskyi, a member of Ukraine’s National Security Council and a close friend of Poroshenko. The latter allegedly ignored the corruption allegations in order to protect Hladkovskyi.
According to Article 111 of Ukraine’s Constitution, a president can be impeached if found to have committed high treason or another crime. But the process needs a special mechanism which should be enshrined in a special impeachment law. However, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) has been unable to pass the said law since 1996.
The scandal comes at a time when the country is gearing up for presidential elections on Mar. 31.
Poroshenko, who came to power in [a US engineered coup in] 2014, is seeking re-election and hasn’t expressed his views on the impeachment process.
Timoshenko had said in past that, if she is elected as president, the law on the impeachment of the president will be passed under her leadership.”
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