Viktor Shokin (l) and Joe Biden (Credit: public domain)
“The State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) has registered a criminal case on pressure from former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden on former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin.
“The SBI has added information on the criminal offence to the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations,” Shokin’s lawyer Oleksandr Teleshetsky said during a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency on February 27.
The case was opened under an appeal from Shokin. The court obliged the SBI to register the proceeding.
In his motion, Shokin spoke of pressure put on him by Biden, Teleshetsky said.
“The reason for the pressure was the investigation being conducted by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine into grave crimes of international corruption linked with the activities of former Ecology Minister of Ukraine Mykola Zlochevsky and top managers at the Burisma company,” he said.
Shokin’s motion was filed with the State Bureau of Investigations back on January 28, 2020, but information about the criminal offence was added to the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations only on February 24 after the country ordered the bureau to register the case, Teleshetsky said.” (Read more: Interfax-Ukraine, 2/27/2020) (Archive)