The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has officially declared a former Kyiv region prosecutor suspected of involvement in former parliamentarian Viktor Lozynsky's illegal release from a penitentiary and put him on the wanted list.
“A former prosecutor of Kyiv region was notified of suspicion on Dec. 9,” Valeriy Karpuntsov, a senior aide to the Ukrainian prosecutor general, announced at a news conference in Kyiv on Friday, Dec. 12.
The former prosecutor has been declared nationally wanted, and his placement on the international wanted list is under consideration.
Karpuntsov did not specify the prosecutor’s name, but, judging by the date when Lozynsky was freed, it can be concluded that the matter concerns Volodymyr Babenko, who was appointed to the office in April 2014.
Kyiv’s Dniprovsky District Court found Lozynsky, a former Verkhovna Rada deputy representing the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, guilty of premeditated murder and illegal storage and handling of weapons and ammunition in April 2011.
Lozynsky had been charged with killing Valery Oliynyk, 55, a resident of the Holovanivsk district in Kirovohrad region, in an incident on June 16, 2009, in which Holovanivsk district Prosecutor Yevhen Horbenko and Holovanivsk district police chief Mykhailo Kovalsky were also involved.
The court also obliged Lozynsky to compensate for legal costs for expert analyses worth over Hr 10,000.
The other individuals figuring in the Lozynsky case were given various prison terms. In particular, Horbenko was sentenced to 9 years in prison, Kovalsky was given a suspended sentence of 5 years in prison with a 3-year probation period, and Holovanivsk forest district gamekeeper Vasyl Perepelytsia was sentenced to 4 years in prison.
The Kyiv Appeals Court commuted Lozynsky’s prison term by one year on March 26, 2013.
It was reported on June 11, 2014 that a court had ruled to free Lozynsky from penitentiary for health reasons. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov reported the next day, on June 12, that Lozynsky had been detained once again.
At the present time, Lozynsky is being held on general conditions at Boryspil correctional facility No. 119 in Kyiv region.
