President Trump has said that Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin was fired in March 2016 after pressure from then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in an alleged effort by Biden to derail an investigation of his son's company. That is an allegation Mr. Biden has strongly denied.
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Now, according to an affidavit reported by the Kiev Post, Shokin claims that Biden had also been trying to interfere with the case of gas tycoon Dmitry Firtash, who is the subject of a drawn out extradition fight by federal prosecutors in Chicago.
Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch, was indicted by a Chicago grand jury in 2014 on bribery racketeering charges alleging a scheme to pay off Indian officials to secure lucrative titanium destined for Chicago-based Boeing. Firtash, a Ukrainian citizen, was arrested in Austria and has been jailed in Vienna ever since.
According to the Shokin affidavit, during Biden's 2015 visit to Ukraine he met with then President Petro Porshenko and "directly manipulated the political leadership of Ukraine on false pretexts, in order to prevent Firtash from returning to Ukraine."
The ex-prosecutor said Obama administration officials didn't want Firtash allowed to leave Austria for Ukraine because there the Eastern European nation doesn't allow extradition of its citizens. If Firtash was allowed to return to his homeland, the belief is he would never have been extradited for trial in Chicago.
The ex-prosecutor's affidavit is said to have been requested by Firtash's attorneys.
Firtash's Chicago attorney and former federal prosecutor Dan Webb tonight says he is unaware of the Ukraine statement because European lawyers are handling the extradition.
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In a statement late Friday, Biden's campaign team called Viktor Shokin "a corrupt prosecutor" and they reiterated that there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden in Ukraine.
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