People's Front not to vote for budget unless law on confiscation is passed
The People's Front faction has made a decision that it will not vote for the budget, unless the Verkhovna Rada adopts the law on special confiscation, Justice Minister and member of the party Pavlo Petrenko said.
"Today, at a meeting of the People's Front faction, we have taken a unanimous decision that the faction will not vote for the budget, unless the law on special confiscation is passed, unless the law on the distribution of these funds is adopted: half the money will go for the army, half for social payments to pensioners and public sector employees," he said at the Freedom of Speech talk show on the ICTV TV channel on Monday evening.
The justice minister said he is convinced that there are no clear arguments against this bill.
"I want to say that this bill applies to top officials who are charged with corruption at the large scale, those who were notified of this suspicion and whose assets have been arrested. This law does not apply to entrepreneurs or any Ukrainian family, whose apartment may be taken away. These are lies and myths that are being spread," he said.
In addition, Petrenko pointed out that for the first time in the history of the work of experts of the European Commission, they went out in public supported the bill at a press conference as a joint work of the Ukrainian government, lawmakers and European experts.
In addition, in response to the remarks of MP Olena Sotnyk from Samopomich faction that the final provisions of the bill on special confiscation contain a provision that it does not apply to the current high-ranking officials, the minister said that they were ready to remove this provision.