by TChris

After the government rested its case against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins dismissed 23 of 42 charges against him. Lazarenko "is accused of defrauding and extorting hundreds of millions of dollars from his homeland and laundering more than $100 million through U.S. banks."

Jenkins ruled earlier in the trial that prosecutors would have to prove that the schemes Lazarenko was accused of using to defraud his former government were prohibited under Ukranian law and that the money he purportedly stole did not belong to him when it was transported out of the country.

On Friday, the judge said that prosecutors had failed to make their case on most of those points. "That Lazarenko's conduct may have violated some common law fiduciary duty in the United States would be insufficient to prove that he failed to provide honest services to the citizens of Ukraine," the judge wrote in an order issued on Friday.

Lazarenko still faces charges of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiring to steal money from a Ukrainian government-owned dairy business.