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This is why Budapest is the shelter for former pro-Russian Ukranian politicians
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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.
A thoughtful article. The author Somerset Maugham coined the phrase ‘a sunny place for shady people’ with regard to the French Riviera. It seems that this may be expanded to include a number of other places, including Budapest.
The largest corporations in the world are in the tank with China -your talking bit players. The US president and his family were getting millions from Russia – Ukraine – CHINA and the list goes on.
I wonder how the people running Ukraine today got there. The same people who have spent the last 20 years bashing Russia- when trump was elected they made him Putin’s man put there by Putin. Because he was willing to talk with Russia, North Korea and China leaders. The rockets from N Korea stopped when he got involved- same would have happen in Ukraine. It’s called deescalation.
@TM – give it rest, your Trump / MAGA obsession is so boring and not relevant to a forum that is about Hungary.