[stop-imf] Ukraine/IMF scandal

[soren@igc.org]

[Editor's Note: Yesterday IMF spokesman Thomas Dawson would not confirm
these reports; today Fischer says they knew about it in '98.]


Ukraine misused IMF funds in 1997: Fischer
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 29 (AFP) - Ukraine used International Monetary Fund
(IMF) funds for irregular purposes in 1997, but its activities are now back
in order, IMF deputy chief Stanley Fischer said Saturday.
"We are pretty confident about the current situation," he said at the World
Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, referring to a
report in the Financial Times on Friday.
"We'll have to go back and check what happenend in 1997. .. in 1998 we
discovered that some of the Ukrainian reserves were used for other
purposes," he told a press conferrence.
The Financial Times reported that former premier Pavlo Lazarenko was about
to allege that some members of President Leonid Kuchma's government have
been involved in money laundering and embezzlement schemes.
The activities included the improper investment of IMF funds in speculative
government bonds that carried interest rates of up to 66 percent, diverting
613 million dollars of IMF money in 1997, it said.

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