Viktor Shokin and Joe Biden (Credit: Volodymyr Petrov/Agence France Presse)
Former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokhin has appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the guarantor of the Constitution with a request to ensure the response of law enforcement agencies to allegations of unlawful acts by former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden.
At the Interfax-Ukraine agency’s press conference on Tuesday, Shokin’s lawyer Oleksandr Teleshetsky noted that the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) and the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) have not complied with a number of court decisions on the registration and investigation of the crimes that Shokin alleges.
Teleshetsky said more than three months passed after Shokin appealed to law enforcement authorities about the commission of criminal acts against him, but no investigative actions were carried out.
According to him, SBI investigators sent Shokin’s statement to the National Police, and then the crime statement returned to the SBI, where it was ignored. According to Shokin’s complaint, the court had ordered the SBI investigators to enter information about the allegations to the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations, something that was not done.
“Shokin again went to court and on April 14 received a relung, which obliges the PGO to open proceedings on the fact that SBI officials did not comply with the court decision,” the lawyer said, adding that this decision also remains unfulfilled.
“In connection with another failure to comply with the court decision … Shokin was forced to appeal again to the court with a corresponding complaint about inaction,” the lawyer said.
According to him, Shokin was never questioned either as a victim, or even as a witness, and no other investigative actions were carried out either.
“Obviously, the investigator and the prosecutor were given the task … to block and ignore this case,” the lawyer said.
Teleshetsky said proceedings on Shokin’s statement about Biden’s criminal actions are in the investigative department of the National Police, but investigators there are not taking any steps to investigate.
This is why Shokin is appealing to Zelensky, the lawyer said.
“Shokin prepared an appeal to the president with a request to ensure the protection of the rights and interests as a citizen of Ukraine in this criminal proceeding and bring those responsible to justice for the systematic failure to execute court decisions in criminal proceedings according to his statements,” the lawyer said.
He also added that there is every reason to provide Shokin with protection in connection with the information published by him about Biden’s pressure.
“Shokin’s life could be in danger. The Ukrainian state should initiate protection through law enforcement agencies. …We believe that today there are enough grounds for this,” the lawyer said.
As reported, on February 27, the SBI registered a criminal proceeding about pressure on Shokhin by former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. The reason for the pressure was the investigation by the PGO of serious crimes in the field of international corruption related to the activities of ex-Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Mykola Zlochevsky and the leaders of the Burisma company. The case was opened under Part 2 of Article 343.
The lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump Rudolf Giuliani in a number of interviews announced the intervention of the former vice president in Ukrainian politics and participation in corruption cases. In particular, he claims that Shokin was fired at the request of Biden – ostensibly for his knowledge of Burisma’s ties with his son Hunter Biden.
At the end of January 2020, Shokin stated that he had been poisoned with mercury five months ago [August 2019] during his stay in Greece, after which he underwent a long period of treatment.
“I don’t have any obvious enemies whom I can blame for this. Of course, one of the versions, but this version requires investigation, is that Biden was somehow involved in some way in these issues. I officially addressed the Greek law enforcement authorities on this and asked them to investigate… Officially, I haven’t received an answer yet, although I contacted them quite a while back about opening criminal proceedings in connection a premeditated attempt to murder me,” Shokin said. (Interfax-Ukraine, 5/12/2020) (Archive)