Former prime minister jailed for extortion

Former Ukrainian prime miister Pavlo Lazarenko was jailed for nine years and fined £5.3m (€7.8m) for money laundering, wire fraud and extortion.

The sentence was half of the maximum sought by US prosecutors, who said the 53-year-old former premier misused his high office in the ex-Soviet republic to get rich through a series of business schemes.

He was the first former head of government to be tried in the US since Manuel Noriega of Panama.

A 12-member US jury in San Francisco convicted him in June 2004 and he has since remained under house arrest at an undisclosed location on £45.5m (€69m) bail.

Lazarenko denied he siphoned funds or accepted bribes in exchange for government contracts and favours, claiming his multi-million dollar fortune was earned legitimately at a time his country, emerging from the Soviet Union’s collapse, had a new and lawless free-market economy.

Defence lawyers, who pushed for a four-year sentence, said the prosecution was politically motivated and that political enemies withheld evidence that could have exonerated him.

Lazarenko sought political asylum in the US in 1999 during his country’s presidential election campaign, claiming he had faced three assassination attempts. Instead the US government arrested him and tried him to prevent criminals from using the US as a safe haven for dirty money.

According to the US government, Lazarenko used his political clout to set up an international underground network of bank accounts to launder profits made through clandestine schemes involving natural gas, agribusiness, housing and other businesses in Ukraine.

Authorities claimed £60m (€88m) was directed to banks in the US, mostly in San Francisco.

Lazarenko has appealed against his conviction.

In March, he was elected to a regional parliament office in Dnepropetrovsk.