President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky believes that the prosecutor’s office should respond to the recording of conversations of allegedly former head of state Petro Poroshenko and former US vice president Joe Biden, in his opinion, this case can be qualified as treason.
Earlier, non-factional parliamentary deputy Andrei Derkach released records of allegedly telephone conversations of Poroshenko and Biden, which, according to him, testify to international corruption and state treason of the former president. One of the conversations concerned the dismissal of Viktor Shokin from the post of prosecutor general of Ukraine, allegedly at the request of Biden. In exchange for this, he promised Poroshenko to allocate 1 billion dollars to Ukraine. In addition, issues of the presence of a coalition in parliament were discussed. Derkach said that all the many hours of recordings received from journalists were transferred to the office of the prosecutor general along with a statement of crimes to institute criminal proceedings.
“The prosecutor’s office, law enforcement officers should react. I know that the prosecutor general of Ukraine registered the criminal proceedings yesterday. There will be an investigation, I know that it can be perceived as high treason, it’s for law enforcement”, – Zelensky said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Shokin previously wrote a statement to law enforcement agencies about the interference in his work Biden. Agency “Ukrainian News”, citing a source in the State Bureau of Investigation, reported that because of the possible interference of a US citizen in the work of Shokin, a case was opened in Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine agreed to dismiss Shokin in 2016. The ex-prosecutor general tried to appeal his dismissal at the appellate level, but to no avail. He filed a new complaint with the Administrative Court of Cassation of the Supreme Court of Ukraine in September 2019.