You're reading: Media: Ukrainian billionaire questioned as part of financing terrorism investigation

Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov has been questioned as a witness over an investigation into the financing of terrorism and illegal paramilitary groups, LB.ua, an online news outlet, reported on Jan. 23. 

“Yes, yesterday I was at the questioning (at the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office) for the first time. The investigator and I talked for quite a long while, I answered all the questions. I think there will be no more questions for me,” Akhmetov told the news outlet, adding that he cannot disclose the subject and details of the conversation.

He said he spent several hours talking to investigators.

A police source has told Interfax-Ukraine that Akhmetov had been questioned by a prosecutor as part of an investigation in criminal proceedings over the financing of terrorism and separatism.

However, the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office press service said it can neither confirm nor deny this information.

It emerged earlier that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General was investigating the possible involvement of Opposition Bloc member Natalia Korolevska and former Party of Regions parliamentarian Oleksandr Yefremov in the financing of terrorism and illegal paramilitary groups.

“On January 6 Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema ordered his first deputy to file a report with the register of pre-trial investigations and conduct a preliminary inquiry into the possible involvement of Yefremov, Korolevska and others in separatist activities and the financing of illegal paramilitary groups,” the prosecutor general’s senior aide Valery Karpuntsov said.

Earlier, the Ukrainian president’s commissioner for peace resolution in Donbas, Irina Herashchenko, had sent a request to the Prosecutor General’s office asking it to check claims that Korolevska and Yefremov were involved in the financing of the central government’s armed opponents in eastern Ukraine.