Lutsenko says he returned $4 bln to Ukraine

He said this in an interview with the Ukrayinska Pravda news site.

"During my tenure, the Prosecutor General's Office, together with colleagues from the Interior Ministry, the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Fiscal Service, returned $4 billion to the state in money or property. $4 billion. Of these funds, $1.5 billion is money from the criminal organization of [former Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych," Lutsenko said.

At the same time, he said, he intended to return seven more billion U.S. dollars, which Yanukovych's entourage hid in the United States.

"Another $7 billion of the same organization was withdrawn from Ukraine to the United States. [...] This is the money of Yanukovych's criminal organization. When we confiscated one-and-a-half billion [U.S. dollars], they came through more than ten different offshore companies connected by the same individuals. Some offshore companies were also present during the withdrawal of seven billion [U.S. dollars]. It means that the same organization operated with the same methods and sometimes with the same tools," he said.

Lutsenko said that in order to return $7 billion he addressed "authorized persons of the United States" but received no answer.

He then addressed the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv with an offer to arrange a meeting with the U.S. attorney general.

"There is a direct lie in [former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine] Marie Yovanovitch's testimony to Congress. She states that I wanted this meeting, but refused to provide the documents about what I wanted to discuss in the U.S. I took these documents," Lutsenko said.

He noted that he had sent a respective letter to the embassy, dated October 28, 2017.

"And Marie Yovanovitch told a lie to the U.S. Congress when she said that I had not provided information that I wanted to meet with the U.S. attorney general," Lutsenko said.

op