US, EU ambassadors and IMF ask Ukrainian parliament to postpone consideration of illicit enrichment bills
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the US and EU ambassadors to Ukraine have sent a letter to the relevant Ukrainian parliamentary committee asking it to postpone the consideration of all 13 pending bills on the penalty for illicit enrichment, since all the initiatives that have been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine so far are defective, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
“The US ambassador, the IMF mission, and the EU ambassador have written a letter – it arrived today: They request that we postpone the consideration of all the bills, because they are defective, even the presidential bill,” said Andriy Kozhemiakin, chairperson of the parliamentary committee on law enforcement legislation, on Monday.
MP Mustafa Nayyem wrote in a blog post for Ukrayinska Pravda that the US embassy, the IMF, the World Bank and the EU mission to Ukraine all expressed their willingness to cooperate in order to rectify the decision of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court.
According to the Ukrainian politician, the letter was signed by the US and EU ambassadors Marie Yovanovich and Hugues Mingarelli, IMF permanent representative Gösta Ljungman, and World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, Satu Kahkonen.
An identical letter was addressed to President Petro Poroshenko, Nayyem clarified.
“I believe that on Wednesday, the parliamentary committee will discuss the possibility of creating a work group that, together with the authors of all the bills and representatives of the interested parties, will draft a common version of article 368-2 on illicit enrichment,” the MP added.
The Constitutional Court of Ukraine recently revoked article 368-2 of the Criminal Code, which deals with the punishment of officials for illicit enrichment.