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Kiev court orders probe of Ukrainian president for using fake passport on New Year’s trip

Ukrainian media reported earlier that while crossing the border, the presidential family showed travel passports issued in false names and that the holiday cost more than $500,000

KIEV, November 16. /TASS/. Kiev’s Pechersky District Court has ordered the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office to launch a pre-trial investigation into individuals who helped President Pyotr Poroshenko and his family go on holiday to the Maldives with fake passports last January, Attorney Renat Kuzmin, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s former first deputy, said on Friday.

"Yesterday, Kiev’s Pechersky court sent me a ruling binding the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office to file a criminal case and conduct an investigation into the fact of malfeasance by the staff of the Administration of the State Guard of Ukraine, and of the migration and fiscal agencies, who had issued counterfeit documents for a foreign trip by the Ukrainian president and his family, as well as into the fact of assisting the above-mentioned persons and the State Guard’s officers escorting them to illegally cross Ukraine’s state border," he wrote on Facebook attaching a photo of that ruling.

The court issued the ruling in early May, Kuzmin added, but it was officially announced six months later and "only following multiple reminders."

On January 1, the Ukrainian president, his family and bodyguards set off on a New Year holiday trip to the Maldives. Ukrainian media reported then that while crossing the border, the presidential family showed travel passports issued in false names and that the holiday cost more than $500,000. Poroshenko retorted that he had crossed the border with his own passport, which was correspondingly stamped by border guards, and that he had paid for the trip from his personal account.