Originally posted here.
A court in the capital of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, on July 28 ordered the arrest of 13.1 million Swiss francs ($13.6 million) on accounts owned by the wife of a Ukrainian judge, Ukraine’s State Financial Monitoring Service has reported.
The service, together with the financial intelligence services of Liechtenstein, discovered that five companies, registered in Panama and Liechtenstein, had opened the accounts in banks in Liechtenstein and Latvia.
“A substantial amount of money of doubtful origin” has accumulated in the accounts, according to the report.
The State Financial Monitoring Service said the companies belong to or have been operated by the acting judge of Ukraine’s Supreme Economic Court and his wife. The service did not identify the judge.
The service, however, did say that the judge had been one of the deputies of the chairman of the Supreme Economic Court when Viktor Yanukovych was president.
According to the official website of the High Council of Justice of Ukraine, two judges were appointed as the chairman’s deputies of the Supreme Economic Court on May 16, 2013. They are Artur Yemelyanov and Viktor Moskalenko.
However, Moskalenko isn’t listed as an acting judge of the Supreme Economic Court, according to the website of the court, while Yemelyanov is an acting judge of the fourth chamber of the court.
The court’s press service, when contacted by the Kyiv Post, said it could neither deny nor confirm that the judge whose assets had been arrested in foreign banks was indeed Yemelyanov.
A Donetsk native, Yemelyanov appeared in the media spotlight early this year when he reported that he owns 12 apartments and two houses in his asset declaration, while his annual salary is about $10,300.
After avoiding journalists for about a month, Yemelyanov finally told the Hromadske television channel’s investigative program Slidstvo.Info that the assets belong to his wife, who is “a private entrepreneur.”
According to the Slidstvo.Info, the judge’s wife, Svitlana Yemelyanova, owns a beauty salon and runs self-development courses, none of which make much money.
The State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine says it will continue to cooperate with the financial intelligence services of Liechtenstein to investigate the sources of the money found in the arrested accounts.
All the materials of the case have been submitted to the Prosecutor’s General Office of Ukraine, the service said in a press release.
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyon Zhuk can be reached at zhuk@kyivpost.com.