This is why Budapest is the shelter for former pro-Russian Ukranian politicians

In recent years, several pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and businessmen have fled to Budapest to save their fortune in the Hungarian capital.

Many of them also seem to be lucky, as Hungarian authorities did not take any action against their assets, even though they have long been international fugitives. Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture Mikola Prisyazhnyuk visited Budapest in February 2013 for the 20th Gun Hunting and Fishing Exhibition, where he was accompanied by Hungarian ministers. After the event, he visited the former presidential palace, also known as Tildy Palace at Andrássy Avenue. The building once belonged to him through an intricate web of companies, and today all we can say with certainty is that the building, last valued at EUR 19 million, belongs to his family. He is under investigation and wanted in Ukraine and is subject to international sanctions – written Napi.hu.

One year later, in February 2014, he was forced to leave his position as the Majdan revolution in Ukraine escalated. Several cases were brought against him, the most high-profile of which was an inter-state agreement with China: the crux of the matter was that, as a minister, he had agreed to provide Ukraine with a $3 billion loan from the Far Eastern country in exchange for agricultural goods. The deal turned out in a way that the first $1.5 billion ended up in the accounts of leading Ukrainian politicians instead of the promised agricultural development programmes. In March of the same year, his Kyiv apartment was searched, and according to the Ukrainian special prosecutor’s office, $286,000 and 659,000 hryvnias were seized, along with expensive watches and other assets.

A few months later, after the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Western countries imposed a series of sanctions against members of the former pro-Russian Ukrainian Government under the hand of Viktor Yanukovych. Prisyazhnyuk was also among those 56 politicians whom the Ukrainian authorities went after by asking the international community to freeze their accounts and confiscate their assets. In addition, Prisyazhnyuk’s name is

on the US sanctions list, but he is also on the EU, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Ukraine lists, but not on the list of any Hungarian authority.

Budapest has done the same in the case of Eduard Stavitsky, former Ukrainian Energy Minister, who is also suspected of corruption and embezzlement offences. In the latter case, the suspicions were even confirmed by Interpol, which issued an international wanted notice in 2014. Stavitsky was long suspected of having fled to Russia like Yanukovych, but in 2015 it emerged that he had fled to Israel, where he was granted a visa and then citizenship under the name Nathan Rosenberg, because of his alleged Jewish ancestry.

The two politicians are linked by the fact that they were both members of the last pro-Russian Ukrainian government and are still under investigation by the Ukrainian authorities.

The cases of Prisyaznyuk and Stavitsky are not unprecedented. After the Majdan protests in 2014 and the beginning of the Ukrainian détente, several fleeing pro-Russian politicians also headed for Budapest instead of Moscow or Israel, Stavitsky’s choice of country. This was due to the fact that

it was easy to obtain a Hungarian passport because of their dual citizenship.

On the other hand, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, many Ukrainian businessmen and former officials had contacts in Budapest.

In July 2016, Ukraine’s National Security Service (SZBU) found a Hungarian passport in the possession of Viktor Svets, head of the Supreme Economic Court, who had used it to leave the country several times. No information was provided as to whether it was a forged document. Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Sepelev was detained in Budapest in 2015 with a fake Hungarian passport and subsequently applied for refugee status in Hungary, which was rejected by the Hungarian authorities.

According to some sources, Prisyaznyuk was seen several times in Budapest even during the lockdown period, but it is not known whether he is a Budapest resident. Stavitsky, on the other hand, lives in Israel, where he has been photographed several times, according to Ukrainian press reports.

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Source: napi.hu