Ottawa, Canada. Most people think of Canada as a sleepy neighbor to America’s north, but in explosive court documents coming out of Kiev, a large number of corrupt Ukrainian officials are hiding proceeds there and in turn getting instant citizenship from corrupt Canadian officials.
The Ukrainian Department of Justice has started extradition procedures against a former member of Congress, closely tied to ex Prime Minister Arseny Petrovich Yatsenyuk according to documents filed here and in Kiev, Ukraine.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) has asked Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov to initiate the expatriation procedure for MP Andriy Artemenko via the State Migration Service of Ukraine, Spokesperson of Prosecutor General Larysa Sarhan has reported.
“The State Migration Service could ask the Ukrainian president to terminate Ukrainian citizenship of MP Artemenko after receiving the materials from the Prosecutor General’s Office,” Sarhan wrote on her Facebook page on Friday. In this case Artemenko might elude justice in Kiev and simply stay in Canada, never having answered for millions of dollars in missing funds from the Ukrainian state treasury.
She said that during the investigation of a crime committed in violation of Article 111 of the Criminal Code (high treason) enough documents had emerged confirming that Artemenko was admitted to citizenship of Canada and has the passport of Canadian citizen.
The New York Times reported that Artemenko previously presented his plan for ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Trump administration. Under the plan, a referendum would be held on the question of leasing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula to the Russian Federation from 50 to 100 years, as well as the withdrawal of Russian occupation forces in eastern Ukraine.
Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko said that Artemenko had documented to the prosecutor’s office that he has Canadian citizenship, in addition to Ukrainian citizenship: “He said at one of the interrogations that he was a Canadian citizen.” Surprisingly, on the investigator’s request to confirm this, he said: “Of course, the next time I’ll bring the documents.” At the same time, Lutsenko showed journalists a copy of the Canadian passport and confirmed corrupt Canadian officials were providing passports to Poroshenko, Groysman, Turchynov and Yatsenuyk as well.