Ukraine lawmaker faces court over alleged $250,000 sanctions arrangement

Filed 4h ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Rijksmuseum · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau has sent to court the case of a lawmaker, identified by anti-corruption watchdogs as Anna Skorokhod, accused of leading a group that offered to arrange National Security and Defense Council sanctions against a rival company for $250,000. Investigators say half the money changed hands before the group reportedly failed to find any council official willing to go along with it.

Searches of Skorokhod's home in December turned up evidence prosecutors call damning; Skorokhod called the published photos fabricated. Courts have since set bail twice, once above 4.5 million hryvnias for an alleged accomplice and over 3 million for the lawmaker herself, with bail posted and a property seizure motion considered days later.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A quarter-million dollars changed hands for a sanctions order that, as best anyone can tell, no actual official ever agreed to sign. That is either the world's worst bribery scheme or proof that some government offices are harder to buy than people assume. Either way, calling the photos fabricated after they turn up in your own house is a defense that asks a lot of a judge.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Scheming Weasel faster · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0