NABU invites National Bank of Ukraine, Rada to adopt system to keep tabs on cash forex brought into Ukraine

MOSCOW. Nov 18 (Interfax) - Since the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) is unable to establish how the large sum of foreign currency in cash used by the persons involved in the energy sector corruption scandal got into Ukraine, a special accounting system has been proposed, Ukrainian media reported, citing a statement from head of the NABU detective unit Alexander Abakumov, who is in charge of the investigation.

"It is the second time we have faced such a large amount of money that came to Ukraine in the packaging of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. And, also for the second time, we will apparently find ourselves in a situation where we will never be able to answer how it got into Ukraine," media outlets quoted Abakumov as saying in Kiev on Monday at a meeting of the provisional investigative commission on economic security chaired by Golos faction MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.

The U.S. Federal Reserve System records who it sells these funds to in Europe, but no one does so in Ukraine, he said.

"I am inviting the MPs, the National Bank to adopt a system to keep tabs on such amounts of cash brought into Ukraine, who they are sold to, and it will greatly help prevent such situations," Abakumov said.

Zheleznyak, in turn, confirmed his readiness to review this initiative in the Verkhovna Rada. In the case of Operation Midas, as Ukrainian authorities call the case into the energy sector corruption scandal involving people from Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's inner circle, it is the so-called white dollars, not the new blue dollars, that were found in Fed packaging in an amount of about $4 million in total, he said.