ST JOHN'S-For­mer Ukran­ian Prime Min­is­ter Pavlo Lazarenko has been in jail since 2009 for a se­ries of fi­nan­cial crimes, but fresh at­tempts by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment to seize his as­sets around the world has dragged An­tigua's name afresh in­to the mon­ey laun­der­ing scan­dal. The US gov­ern­ment has moved to seize a por­tion of an es­ti­mat­ed US$250 mil­lion in al­leged­ly il­lic­it­ly ob­tained by the for­mer Ukran­ian prime min­is­ter and sup­pos­ed­ly se­cret­ed in bank ac­counts lo­cat­ed across the world in­clud­ing in An­tigua, Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, Lithua­nia, and Guernsey, ac­cord­ing to re­ports.

How­ev­er, liq­uida­tors of the de­funct Eu­ro­pean Fed­er­al Cred­it Bank are try­ing to block the US gov­ern­ment's move. The US Jus­tice De­part­ment has been or­dered to pro­vide more spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion about its ef­forts to seize the mon­ey linked to Lazarenko and his as­so­ciates and crimes com­mit­ted in the 1900s. The Russ­ian gas gi­ant OAO Gazprom has al­so filed suit in the Wash­ing­ton fed­er­al dis­trict court. At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing these two en­ti­ties say the Jus­tice De­part­ment has not ex­plained how the mon­ey it is seek­ing is tied to Lazarenko's al­leged crimes. They al­so want de­tails about the spe­cif­ic crimes the mon­ey is linked to.

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