Yanukovych mafia ‘took €72bn out of Ukraine’

Ukraine’s chief prosecutor has accused Viktor Yanukovich of heading a mafia-style syndicate whose crimes cost the former Soviet republic up to $100 billion (€72bn) and said some of the stolen money was now being used to fund Russian-backed separatists.

Ex-president Yanukovich fled to Russia in late February after a revolt that prompted Vladimir Putin to annex Ukraine’s Crimea province, triggering the biggest confrontation between the Kremlin and the West since the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Acting Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky said that while president from 2010, Yanukovich personally ran a multi-billion dollar criminal syndicate whose tentacles reached almost all walks of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian life.