Investigation into Yuriy Lutsenko opened at the request of a lawmaker in the Ukrainian president’s party

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Ukraine has opened an investigation into Yuriy Lutsenko, a former prosecutor who fed information about the Biden family to Rudy Giuliani, shortly after he left the country, apparently for an English language course.

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It was not immediately clear if the investigation launched on Tuesday is a form of political retribution for Lutsenko’s role in an international scandal that has led Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.

Lutsenko is one of several prosecutors who shared information with Giuliani that claimed to show that Joe Biden scuttled an investigation into his son’s business dealings with a Ukrainian company, Burisma.

The investigation caught Trump’s attention and in a July phone call, he repeatedly told Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate the Biden family while withholding military aid. Last week, a whistleblower complaint about the call with the Ukrainian president prompted Democrats to launch the impeachment inquiry.

Lutsenko has since said that the investigation did not show that the Biden family had broken any laws in Ukraine.

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Zelenskiy on Tuesday said that he did not feel pressured by Trump and had never met or spoken with Giuliani, despite the former New York mayor’s repeated attempts to contact him or travel to Kyiv.

The investigation into Lutsenko was opened at the request of a lawmaker in the president’s party, who said he suspected the former prosecutor of ties to underground gambling in the capital, Kyiv.

A spokesperson for the State Bureau of Investigations confirmed the investigation to local media, saying that it was an inquiry into “abuse of office for facilitating illegal gambling”.

Lutsenko told reporters earlier this week that he was flying to the United Kingdom to attend a six-week language course to prepare for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam. He did not appear to be joking. His spokeswoman has also said that he had has left to study English.