Former Kharkiv Governor Arsen Avakov is on his way to becoming the latest Ukrainian opposition politician to flee successfully abroad to avoid prison at home.
Avakov, an ally of
imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, says Italian
prosecutors do not want to honor their Ukrainian counterparts’
request to extradite him to Ukraine.
On July 19, Avakov
published on his Facebook page a photocopy of a document purportedly
sent by Italian prosecutors to the appeal court in Rome on June 11.
It says prosecutors are asking the court to let Avakov remain in
Italy because he might be subject to “politically motivated
persecution” at home.
The Embassy of Italy in
Ukraine told the Kyiv Post that the “prosecutor general’s office
[in Italy] asked the Court of Appeals not to extradite Avakov, but no
decision was taken by the court.”
Avakov served as Kharkiv
Oblast governor from 2005-2010. In January, Ukrainian prosecutors
charged Avakov with abuse of office – the same Soviet-era charge
that led to the imprisonment of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
for seven years.
Prosecutors say that,
during Avakov’s term as Kharkiv governor, he is suspected of
illegal distribution of 55 hectares in land plots worth Hr 5.5
million ($687,000). The ex-governor denies the charge and says that
his signatures on the land documents are forged.
Instead, Avakov believes
that he is the target of persecution of opposition politicians,
sanctioned by President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration.
If allowed to stay in
Italy, Avakov would be the third Ukrainian connected to the
political opposition who fled abroad and successfully avoided
criminal prosecution at home.
In January, Tymoshenko’s
husband, Oleksandr, was granted refugee status in Czech Republic, a
year after Bohdan Danylyshyn, ex-Economy Minister in Tymoshenko’s
government, got political asylum there.
Earlier in April, Avakov
said that he was not seeking political asylum in the European Union.
In a recent interview to the Radio Liberty, he said he might return
to Ukraine if he is elected into parliament from the Tymoshenko’s
Batkivshchyna party during the Oct. 28 elections.
Lawmakers in Ukraine are
immune from criminal persecution. Yet a lawmaker can be stripped of
immunity if the General Prosecutor’s Office files a respective
petition in the parliament and at least half of the 450-seat
legislature supports it.
Kyiv Post staff
writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]
