Poroshenko must convince his faction to support special forfeiture law, - Yatseniuk

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko must convince members of his faction to unanimously support the bill on special confiscation of assets derived from criminal activities of Yanukovych associates that will return $1.5 billion to Ukraine's budget.

Former Prime Minister of Ukraine, People's Front faction leader Arsenii Yatseniuk told reporters on the sidelines of the Verkhovna Rada, parliamentary correspondent for Censor.NET reports.

"The parliament is going to consider the adoption of the Law of Ukraine on the State Budget for the next year today. For the budget to be implemented, the parliament must perform its key function of establishing justice by adopting a law that makes it possible to forfeit $1.5 billion attached by the government I headed. These funds were misappropriated from Ukraine's budget and siphoned off into 42 offshore companies having no owners except for the people close to Viktor Yanukovych," Yatseniuk stressed.

He recalled that the mentioned funds were kept in a state-owned Oschadbank in cash and government securities that were attached in order to be returned to the state budget.

Yatseniuk also called unacceptable the fact that a half of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction members did not vote for the bill after the president had publicly spoken in its support twice and called on the MPs to approve it. "It's obscene!" Yatseniuk said.

"In my point of view, the president must not just instruct his faction but meet with its members as soon as possible so that the Ukrainian Parliament will finally make the lawful and fair decision to confiscate $1.5 billion and spend them for social benefits specified by our faction. A half of this amount will be spent for the national security and defense, directly for the Ukrainian servicemen. Our faction offers to spend the second half for social welfare of nine million Ukrainian citizens," Yatseniuk said.