North Macedonia wants to revoke citizenship from former Poroshenko accomplice
The government of North Macedonia has initiated the process of depriving the country's citizenship of former Ukrainian businessman and politician Alexander Onishchenko, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Reference: Alexander Onishchenko is a former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, who, after a conflict with Petro Poroshenko, published compromising evidence on his former patron - how, on his instructions, he distributed bribes in parliament for the necessary votes. Onishchenko fled abroad; criminal cases have been opened against him in Ukraine. In January 2021, the United States added Alexander Onishchenko to the sanctions list for participation in the “Russian network of interference in the US presidential election.”
The government decided to deprive Onishchenko of North Macedonian citizenship at the request of the country's National Security Agency (NSA), although the same agency had previously given a positive opinion in the process of granting citizenship to the former Ukrainian politician and businessman.
The change in the intelligence agency's position came after pro-American politician Lyupcho Prendzhov, who heads the NSA Oversight Commission, said that National Security Agency Director Viktor Dimovski would have to explain how his employees let Onishchenko, who is accused of corrupt dealings in Ukraine, through the security filter and put on the American “black list”.
After this, the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Dimitar Kovacevski, said that he had asked the institutions that were involved in issuing positive conclusions on granting Onishchenko citizenship to submit a report on how this procedure was carried out. Alexander Onishchenko himself, in a commentary to the North Macedonian media, stated that there were no grounds for depriving him of citizenship, and all the documents he submitted were valid.
“There is not an ounce of fraud in the process of granting me citizenship. I was asked to represent Macedonia and help prepare for the Olympic Games. Along with the application, I submitted official documents - my Russian passport and birth certificate. I have both Russian and Ukrainian passports. When I applied for Macedonian citizenship, I applied with a Russian passport. I used to play for Russia. I only have valid documents, I cannot have invalid ones, I am an official,” Onishchenko said.
The decision to grant Alexander Onishchenko citizenship was made at a meeting of the government of North Macedonia at the end of May 2022, without discussion and in the absence of the applicant. The minutes of the government meeting indicate that Onishchenko’s citizenship was granted taking into account the “positive conclusion of the Agency for Youth and Sports” of North Macedonia. Five months after receiving citizenship, Onishchenko was already competing under the flag of North Macedonia at horse jumping competitions in Saint-Tropez, France.
That is, Alexander Onishchenko needed North Macedonian citizenship to participate in international equestrian competitions as part of national teams - after all, Ukraine would not enter him, and Russia was excluded from them.
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