Sytnik’s bureau arrested an official in charge of spending funds that Ukraine received under the Kyoto Protocol. He is suspected of embezzling Hr 480 million.
On May 18, the bureau arrested Oleksandr Kolesnyk, a deputy prosecutor of Kyiv Oblast suspected of stealing sugar worth Hr 300 million.
The bureau has also been investigating alleged links between Olga Tkachenko, an executive of the Odesa Portside Plant and an ex-aide to lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, and a suspected corruption scheme at the plant. However, a Kyiv court has blocked the bureau from accessing Tkachenko’s Viber messages.
Hranovsky and another ally of President Petro Poroshenko, Ihor Kononenko, have been accused of participating in the corruption scheme. They deny the accusations.
Anti-reformer of the week
Pavlo Vovk, chairman of Kyiv’s Administrative District Court, has been filmed meeting with lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, a key ally of President Petro Poroshenko, according to a Radio Liberty investigation released last week.
The investigation provides evidence for reports that Hranovsky is interfering with the judicial and prosecutorial system on behalf of Poroshenko and Ihor Kononenko, the president’s “grey cardinal.”
In April Vovk’s Administrative District Court reinstated in his job Serhiy Lysenko, an infamous prosecutor who threatened to beat a defendant last year.
The court has also issued controversial rulings exempting Kyiv’s acting chief prosecutor Oleh Valendyuk and Lyudmila Demchenko, head of the State Fiscal Service’s Kyiv branch, from the lustration law, which stipulates firing top officials who served under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
Moreover, the court has reinstated police officers fired during the vetting of police, blocking the Interior Ministry’s reform.
