Afrigather Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised that “justice might be ensured” as regulation enforcement continues to clamp down on corruption amongst distinguished Ukrainian officers.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) posted on its Facebook account Wednesday that its items had raided a number of properties related to high-profile Ukrainian officers in its investigation of a “large-scale appropriation scheme.” SBU alleged that former administration of the state-run vitality firms Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta had been linked to “embezzling giant batches of petroleum merchandise” and evading tax funds.
In keeping with a number of Ukrainian media stories, one of many properties searched was owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian businessman who, in line with The Kyiv Independent, has been stripped of Ukrainian citizenship and was beforehand sanctioned by the U.S.
Sergei Supinsky/AFP through Getty Photos
Different high-profile Ukrainians concerned within the raid embrace Arsen Avakov, former inside minister, who the Kyiv Post reported was searched in connection to a helicopter crash in January that killed 14 people in a suburb of Kyiv, together with Avakov’s successor, Denys Monastyrsky.
The Impartial added in its report that Avakov resigned in 2021 after “an extended, scandal-ridden tenure,” together with being charged in 2017 in an embezzlement scheme.
Ukraine’s Cupboard of Ministers additionally dismissed the pinnacle of the State Customs Service, Vyacheslav Demchenko, on Wednesday, a day after the SBU reported on its Telegram account that it had uncovered a corruption scheme on the customs workplace within the metropolis of Zhytomyr.
In his nightly address Wednesday, Zelensky acknowledged Demchenko’s dismissal, and thanked the Ukrainian authorities “for its immediate personnel response.”
“Sadly, in some spheres, the one solution to assure legitimacy is to alter leaders together with institutional adjustments implementation,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president additionally talked about the “dozens of searches” performed by regulation enforcement earlier within the day, including that he has seen “from the response in society that individuals approve the actions of regulation enforcers.”
“Therefore, the motion in direction of justice is tangible,” he added. “And justice might be ensured.”
The sequence of probes, deemed by the Impartial because the “largest anti-corruption raid” for the reason that begin of the Russia-Ukraine warfare, got here every week after several high-profile Ukrainian officials resigned, together with the deputy protection minister, Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who was “requested to be launched so as to not create threats to the steady help of the Armed Forces of Ukraine because of the marketing campaign of accusations associated to the procurement of meals companies.”
Different officers dismissed final week included the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential workplace, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy prosecutor Oleksiy Symonenko and several other distinguished governors.
Ukraine has long struggled with a reputation for corruption, and in 2021 was ranked 122nd out of 180 international locations by the Transparency Worldwide’s Corruption Notion Index.
As Newsweek beforehand reported, Zelensky’s present push to thwart corruption amongst its prime ranks could also be largely driven by Ukraine’s reliance on its Western allies in its protection in opposition to Russia’s invasion.
Newsweek has reached out to Zelensky’s workplace for remark.
