Ukrainian authorities arrested Oleksandr Yefremov, former key member of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, in Kyiv Boryspil airport on July 30.
Yefremov, 61, was detained on the charges of violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity, according to Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. It is punishable by 7 to 12 years in prison.
Lutsenko said that a week prior to the arrest his office received a testimony saying that Yefremov was directly involved in the takeover of Luhansk, his native city in eastern Ukraine, by the Kremlin-backed separatists.
It is a new charge against Yefremov, who has been a suspect in two criminal proceedings since early 2015, suspected of abuse of office, forgery, and inciting ethnic hatred.
Yefremov’s representatives were not immediately available for a comment.
The former lawmaker was first arrested in February of 2015, but released on bail of Hr 3.6 million the following day. He pleaded not guilty during a court hearing on Nov. 13.
Yefremov was detained as he was going to board a plane to Vienna where his son lives, according to Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan. Within 72 hours the court will decide whether to allow a two-month arrest of Yefremov, as requested by the prosecution.
Lutsenko said that this time the charges against Yefremov are too serious to allow a bail or a house arrest.
The ex-lawmaker led the Party of Regions in 2010-2013. He is a native and former governor of Luhansk, a city in eastern Ukraine that is now under control of Kremlin-backed separatists.
One of the top supporters of Yanukovych, he renounced his former boss immediately after he fled Ukraine, ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution. Yefremov signed a statement by the Party of Regions that shifted responsibility for the attacks on the protesters to Yanukovych personally.
Yefremov is accused of forgery of documents related to the illegal approval of the so-called “dictatorship laws” of Jan. 16, 2014 that severely curtailed civil liberties in Ukraine in an attempt to halt the EuroMaidan protests.
The charges of inciting ethnic hatred were dismissed by the court in March 2016.
Volodymyr Landyk, another ex-Party of Regions member from Luhansk, claimed that Yefremov was helping the separatists to take over the administrative buildings in Luhansk Oblast in March 2014.
Landyk said in an interview to Channel 112 that Luhansk deputies handed the evidence of Yefremov’s role in the events to the Security Service of Ukraine in Luhansk but the materials were lost after the district department was seized by the separatists. Landyk said he was ready to testify against Yefremov.
Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Sargan told the Kyiv Post that Landyk’s testimony could serve as basis for the new detention.
The Opposition Bloc, a party formed by the former members of the Party of Regions, released a statement denouncing Yefremov’s arrest as “repressions against the political opposition.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Savchuk can be reached at [email protected]
