The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has laid in a 2017 draft State Budget $1.5 billion, expected to be confiscated from Viktor Yanukovych`s entourage within a program of asset recovery, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said during a briefing at the 13th annual meeting of Yalta European Strategy (YES) in Kyiv.
”Indeed, we are planning next year to recover the funds that had been illegally stolen from Ukrainian citizens and then arrested. We plan to consolidate the funds in 2017 Ukrainian Budget. This is obvious because there are two options: these funds will either be siphoned or returned. `Returned` – meaning to the place they`ve been stolen from,” said Groysman.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on September 14 the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has tabled in the Verkhovna Rada an updated bill on special confiscation, which, if adopted, will provide for the confiscation to the state budget $1.5 billion, arrested in the Oshchadbank accounts of the officials of Yanukovych`s regime.
Presenting the bill, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko urged parliamentarians to consider and adopt the document in the next plenary week.
In turn, Groysman emphasized that the support and adoption of the bill is the responsibility of all branches of power. He also said that he was aware of an arrangement of one of the political forces with representatives of Yanukovych`s regime aimed at blocking the bill.
Funds in the amount of $1.5 billion were budgeted in 2016 as one of the resources of funding the needs of the army and raising social standards.
