This ends our live blogging for October 16. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Ex-prosecutor Lutsenko probed for abuse of power:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Former Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko is being investigated on suspicion of abuse of power, Ukrayinska Pravda has reported, citing a response to an inquiry it received from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).
The October 16 report said that the criminal investigation was opened in mid-August, when he was still prosecutor-general and after a Kyiv court ruling earlier that month compelled the NABU to launch a probe.
Lutsenko, 54, was the country's top prosecutor from May 2016 until August 29.
During his tenure he oversaw an investigation into an energy firm on whose board former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter had sat.
Lutsenko during this time also made unsubstantiated claims attacking then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch's work record.
While Lutsenko closed the investigation into gas company Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevskiy, in 2017, this year he met with President Donald Trump's confidante, Rudy Giuliani, to discuss the case.
The Lutsenko-Giuliani meetings were referenced in a government whistle-blower's complaint that was unsealed in August in which Trump is alleged to have prodded Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens.
That complaint, along with a rough transcript of a July 25 Trump-Zelenskiy phone call, prompted the House of Representatives to open an impeachment inquiry into the president.
In April-May, Lutsenko backtracked on his claims about Yovanovitch and said he found no evidence of malfeasance on the part of Hunter and Joe Biden, the latter of whom played a part in getting Lutsenko's predecessor ousted for foot dragging on corruption cases.
"Hunter Biden cannot be responsible for violations of the management of Burisma that took place two years before his arrival," Lutsenko told The Washington Post.
Lutsenko initially in March told a conservative columnist at The Hill newspaper that at their first meeting in 2017, Yovanovitch had given him a "do-not-prosecute list" that he acknowledged a month later was not accurate.
Speaking of their meeting to online publication The Babel, Lutsenko said that "the meeting ended...I'm afraid the emotions were not very good."
Yovanovitch on October 11 told a Congressional panel conducting the impeachment probe that Trump sought her removal as ambassador because of "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives." (w/Ukrayinska Pravda, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, NBC, The Babel, and UNIAN)
Deputy deputy prosecutor says no foreign assets recovered by predecessors:
By RFE/RL
Ukraine's first deputy prosecutor-general, Vitaliy Kasko, has said that in the 3 1/2 years since he left his post, the authorities haven't provided convincing evidence to recover frozen assets abroad that allegedly belong to former President Viktor Yanukovych and his inner circle.
Speaking to state-run Ukrinform agency on October 16, Kasko who was reappointed to his position in September, said that in order to recover any stolen assets from abroad, cases must be successfully investigated and prosecuted in Ukraine before claims can be made in foreign jurisdictions.
Recollecting his first tenure as deputy prosecutor-general in 2014-16, Kasko said that "we need proof in criminal cases in Ukraine to demand or ask for the return of anything from abroad."
In the 3 1/2 years since then, he said "not one kopek was retrieved related to Yanukovych or to any corruption case whatsoever."
The reason being, according to Kasko, is that not one former top official suspected of corruption was convicted in Ukraine and their frozen foreign assets tied to a specific crime.
"But one has to have patience," he said. "There are several criminal investigations under way that show promise. I won't provide time frames or start painting colorful digits in the billions, like some people did. Let's wait for the rulings."
Former Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko in 2017 said that Yanukovych and his cohorts had allegedly absconded with approximately $40 billion.
The former president abandoned office and fled to Russia in February 2014 in the wake of the Maidan pro-democracy movement.
Prosecutors are investigating Yanukovych as the alleged head of an organized crime group that includes oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko, former Revenues and Duties Minister Oleksandr Klymenko, former First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov, and other former high-ranking officials.
Kasko resigned in 2016 over disgust with alleged graft at the Prosecutor-General's Office, then headed by Viktor Shokin.
After stepping down, Kasko said his decision was based on "the fact that the top management has turned into a body dominated by corruption and people covering each other's backs; and any attempts to change this state of affairs are conspicuously persecuted."
He continued, "To be a part of the body that instead of protecting the law, tolerates total lawlessness, I cannot and do not want to."
On September 5, Prosecutor-General Ruslan Ryaboshapka appointed Kasko as one of his deputies. (w/Ukrinform, UNIAN, Novoye Vremya, Ukrayinska Pravda, and Liga.net)