The Hill journalist John Solomon continues his twisted coverage of Ukrainian affairs. This time he focused on us - the Anticorruption Action Center. His op-ed is full of groundless allegations which make no sense.

The piece starts with a praise to Yuriy Lutsenko who, according to Solomon, is "widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country.” We reminded that Lutsenko is widely regarded as “hero” for his drunken disorderly conduct in Frankfurt airport in 2009 while serving as Interior Minister. He was sentenced in Ukraine to four years in prison in early 2012, two years before Russian aggression started in 2014. Lutsenko was then accused of embezzlement of funds of the Ministry of Interior under his leadership and abuse of office.

Then the author speculates that AntAC was "co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros.” Needless to stress this is not true - AntAC was founded in the end of 2011 by Vitaliy Shabunin and Daria Kaleniuk. In 2012 AntAC was functioning without any financial support as a volunteer project of its founders.
 

For more illogical allegations and our explanations please see a detailed rebuttal.

On March 20, 2019, in his infamous interview for The Hill media Yuriy Lutsenko also made an allegation that Sytnyk closed criminal investigations against Mykola Zlochevsky’s Burisma company. During Yanukovych’s presidency, Zlochevsky used to be the minister of environmental protection in 2010-2012 and deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council in 2012-2014.

Energy company Burisma appeared in this story not accidentally. After Maydan Burisma appointed some well-known people to the board of directors, among whom is Hunter Biden, a son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

We've been following criminal cases against Zlochevsky and Burisma very closely and know that it is the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) who has repeatedly covered Zlochevsky up from the criminal prosecution. NABU investigations are still ongoing.
 

For more details see our article for Kyivpost and a detailed brief. 

Mysterious charges against close circle of President Poroshenko

deputy head of Presidential Administration Oleksiy Filatov) and even Mykola Zlochevsky were charged with misappropriation of state funds as part of the investigation of runaway oligarch Sergiy Kurchenko.

The first strangeness of the story is that the initial source of the news has been American media Forumdaily, which claims itself the main news website of Russian-speaking America. The outlet has not previously focused on Ukraine. In Ukrainian media, the news was quickly spread by UNIAN (controlled by Igor Kolomoisky).

Then the news coverage became even more controversial and obscure. Yuriy Lutsenko confirmed on Facebook the finalization of investigation of Kurchenko and charges to a number of top-officials without identification of exact names. Later in a comment to Radio NV Lutsenko named the suspects, among whom was Mykola Zlochevskyi. 

In the meantime, deputy head of PGO International Department Kostiantyn Kulyk (in the photo. His trial on illicit enrichment was recently dropped due to Constitutional Court decision) via UNIAN confirmed charges to another list of persons - the ones, close to Poroshenko.

Larysa Sargan, Lutsenko's spokeswoman, and PGO speaker Andriy Lysenko distributed an official statement of the PGO that suspicion notices against Gontareva, Lozhkin, Stetsenko, Paseniuk and Filatov were announced in violation of the law. During a late night talk show on 1+1 TV Channel Kulyk insisted on the lawfulness of his actions and the existence of charges against Poroshenko’s allies. Sargan threatened him with the criminal investigation over abuse of office. However, she denied the fact of initiating investigation the next day. On Friday, Kulyk claimed that he was summoned for interrogation to PGO and the evidence that proved the guilt of top-officials disappeared from the docket. On her turn, Sargan stated that this did not happen.

All these contradictions raise more questions than give answers. What is certain now is that Lutsenko keeps misusing his position of Prosecutor General for his own political gains.