U.S. television star Larry King received $225,000 from Ukraine’s disgraced former ruling Party of Regions, Ukrainian journalist and politician Serhiy Leshchenko has claimed.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Leshchenko said that he had uncovered evidence which proved that the Party of Regions had paid King using shadow assets.
The longtime CNN host received the money in return for a 2011 interview with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, said Sevgil Musaeva-Borovyk, the chief editor of the Ukrainskaya Pravda news website.
Recently uncovered ledgers also revealed that the Party of Regions made undisclosed payments to Paul Manafort, campaign manager for U.S. Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. The payments, made between 2007 and 2012, were worth $12.7 million, the New York Times reported.
Manafort, who had previously offered consulting services to ousted former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, is accused of having secretly lobbied in Washington for Yanukovych's pro-Russian ruling party alongside his deputy Rick Gates.
Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014 following months of anti-government protests.
Manafort this week called the claims, “unfounded, silly and nonsensical” and added that he had never worked for the governments of Ukraine or Russia.
