Kyiv enable to hand over information against Manafort to help Mueller’s probe - Groysman
Ukraine’s prime minister has said Kyiv is ready to turn over information it has on former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort if special counsel Robert Mueller asks, according to Newsweek.
Volodymyr Groysman, who took office in 2016, evidently wants transparency and cooperativeness, Newsweek reports. "We haven't received any requests for information in this regard, but if we receive a request we will, of course, provide the information we have," Groysman told CBC News during his visit to Canada where he met PM Justin Trudeau. He also wants to separate Ukraine’s present government from the previous regime of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was a pro-Russia candidate that Manafort propped up with a public relations campaign in 2014.
"My government and our term in office have absolutely no relations to this scandal,” Groysman said. Groysman also said Russia was actively spreading disinformation about Ukraine. "This information is unbalanced," Groysman said. "It is biased, and we believe Russia invests a lot of its resources and money into propaganda as a tool of hybrid warfare against Ukraine in particular. Not all information in the world about Ukraine is true to the fact." As reported earlier, Manafort, along with business associate and former Trump campaign official Rick Gates, was accused of funneling $75 million through offshore accounts, and much of it came from Ukraine. Other charges against Manafort and Gates included failure to register as a foreign agent.
In turn, Ukraine’s intelligence service, the SBU, probed Manafort’s operation and reportedly found that Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, backed by the Kremlin, paid him $28.5 million, or $600,000 a month over four years, according to USA Today. Previously, the sum was believed to be $12.5 million. Mueller’s investigation, which Trump has called a “witch hunt,” has delved into Russia’s interference during last year’s presidential election to tip the scales in Trump’s favor over
Source: UNIAN