Alexander Onishchenko

Defgroup Valanadu / YouTube

Petro Poroshenko

Photo from the website of the President of Ukraine

The former Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Onishchenko, the detainee in 2019 in Germany at the request of Kiev, will not be extradited to Ukraine. This is stated in the published statement of the German law firm that represented him.

“The court Oldenburg today’s decision found illegal the case of requested from Ukraine to extradite Alexander Onishchenko and decided his immediate release,” – said in a press release, which is quoted by TASS.

Similar information is published on the court’s website, but there is not the name of the person involved. “At the present time not established that the persecution in the Ukraine may have political motives. However, extradition is impossible, because there are specific grounds for suspecting noncompliance with the mandatory minimum standards in international law”, – stated in the message.

The court added that appealed to the Ukrainian side with a request to describe in detail the alleged conditions of detention of defendant in custody in Kiev, but received only “too General information”.

3 Dec 2019, it became known that the Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the VII and VIII convocations Oleksandr Onishchenko detained in Germany and the question of his extradition to Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian investigation, Onishchenko was the founder and leader of a criminal organization whose members from January 2013 to June 2016 illegally received more than 1.6 billion hryvnia (about 66.6 per million) in natural gas sales, resulting in company “Ukrgasdobycha” had caused considerable material damage. Anti-corruption the Supreme court of Ukraine has arrested 500 thousand euros belonging to Onishchenko, who became a suspect in the case of gas.

Ex-MP 2016 is hiding from the Ukrainian investigation. According to unofficial information, all the while he lived in Spain.

In March 2018, Onishchenko said that it has audio recordings, which at that time the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko threatens him with criminal charges if he refused to organize the vote in Parliament for the “right” bills. After some time, the Ukrainian journalists met with Onishchenko abroad. They confirmed the presence of ex-MP of information that colleagues Poroshenko in the Parliament tried to bribe MPs in order to organize the voting in the interests of the state.

In 2016 in an interview with U.S. magazine Time, Onishchenko said: “I personally witnessed how the President deals with corruption in a massive and unprecedented scale. Over the past three years I have personally witnessed Petro Poroshenko is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars by asking for kickbacks from every contract associated with any state enterprise in Ukraine. Those who refused to pay kickbacks, was seen as disloyal and deliberately and systematically attacked by the government, in the same way as I do.”

Also, the ex-MP claimed that most of the money tranche allocated to Ukraine by the International monetary Fund, Poroshenko “has spent on the war,” the majority of contracts for the provision of military needs got close to it companies.