The National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU refutes reports the agency stopped investigating a criminal case involving former 2016 Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort, emphasizing that it never investigated any matter involving Manafort.

"NABU has repeatedly stated officially that it, as a law enforcement agency designed to investigate the corruption of Ukrainian top officials, is not authorized to conduct an official investigation into Paul Manafort's involvement in receiving funds from the Party of Regions. Manafort was not and is not a Ukrainian civil servant or under investigation by NABU, the bureau said on Thursday.

At the same time, NABU recalled that after publishing information about the presence of the name of Manafort in the materials transferred to the NABU (the so-called "black ledger"), NABU published some fragments of documents in response to media requests.

"Commentary on the publication of August 18, 2016, in particular, noted the name of Paul Manafort was indeed mentioned on separate pages in connection with certain items of expenditure, while at the same time, the statement stressed that the presence of Manafort's name in the lists "did not mean that he actually received these funds, because the recipient's column contained the signatures of other persons," the NABU said.

NABU also said that since June 2017, according to the decision of the head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), all the materials of the case of the "Black Accounts of the Party of Regions," except for an episode of possible improper benefit received by the chairman of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine, were transferred to the Department of Special Investigations of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), which is investigating the case of the usurpation of power by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his entourage.

"Therefore, in fact, since June 2017, the PGO was the body of pretrial investigation in this case, while NABU detectives assisted colleagues in a joint investigation team with the aim wrapping up leads they had worked on during the previous year," NABU said.