'Escape' of Medvedchuk's yacht from Croatia prevented by Task Force foreign partners
Preventing the yacht of MP Viktor Medvedchuk from leaving the territorial waters of Croatia and its further seizure is an indicative case of cooperation between the Ukrainian and foreign offices of the Task Force, the Ukrainian interdepartmental working group Task Force notes.
In an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, member of the Task Force interdepartmental working group, Head of the Department for International Legal Cooperation at the Prosecutor General's Office Dmytro Litkevych said that during the investigation of the criminal case against the MP, his assets abroad were searched for, and in Croatia, ARMA revealed the MP's yacht.
"When we sent the first request for international legal assistance to Croatia with a request to seize the revealed property, we did not receive a concrete answer about the possibility of its implementation within a month," Litkevych said.
According to him, the situation changed when information appeared that the yacht plans to leave the territorial waters of Croatia.
"We quickly responded to this by involving our colleagues from other foreign Task Forces in resolving this issue. Thus, the 'escape' of the yacht was suspended. And then we received a court decision on the transfer of this property to ARMA, on the basis of which our Croatian colleagues made a seizure within its jurisdiction," he said.
In turn, head of the Task Force interdepartmental working group, deputy head of ARMA, Philip Pronin, stressed that ARMA could not have done this on its own.
"Together with the prosecutor's office, several algorithms were developed to preserve the value of this asset, by selling or transferring it to management. Thanks to the prosecutor's office, a consensus was reached with the Croatian side, further actions are planned related to the departure and evaluation of the yacht," Pronin said.
He summed up: "This case is very multi-layered, and international partners worked well on it, and within our country everyone united to achieve a result. That is, the MP's yacht is interesting and indicative in terms of the process organizing technique."