Colonel Valentyn Kryzhanovskiy, a former top Ukrainian law enforcement official, was ordered held in jail for two months following his arrest on Aug. 26. Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court on Aug. 30 issued the order.
Kryzhanovskiy, 46, fled to Russia in late 2005 after accusing his colleagues in Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) of a number of crimes, including corruption, extortion, and dealing in contraband.
Specifically, Kryzhanovskiy accused former SBU head Ihor Dryzhchaniy of overseeing the unlicensed sale to China of eight metric tons of confiscated hafnium and zirconium ore. The SBU officials, however, had said he was merely trying to shift the blame for his own illegal operations with these substances.
Dryzhchaniy headed the SBU from September 2005 to December 2006. Hafnium and zirconium are used in nuclear reactors and in the production of metal alloys.
The deal was worth $1.6 million, Kryzhanovskiy said in an August 2006 interview with the Russian daily newspaper Moskovskie Novosti. Kryzhanovskiy said in the same interview that he had received Russian citizenship.
Interpol has posted an arrest warrant Kryzhanovskiy issued by Kyiv.
Investigative journalist Oleh Yeltsov told the Kyiv Post on Sept. 2 that Kryzhanovskiy notified him a month and a half ago about his plans to return to Ukraine and give evidence to the General Prosecutor’s Office about the crimes he alleged had committed.
“He asked me to post his letter to the GPO’s office on my website, and I gladly complied,” said Yeltsov, adding that Kryzhanovskiy wasarrested while he was en route to the GPO’s office in Kyiv.
In his letter to the GPO, Kryzhanovskiy says that all the criminal charges filed against him have been fabricated.
The SBU press serviceon Sept. 4referred all questions about Kryzhanovskiy’s arrestto the General Prosecutor’s Office.
