Panama has extradited the former director of the Ukraine State Investment Agency, Vladyslav Kaskiv, who was wanted for embezzlement, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said on Nov. 1
Kaskiv was released on bail by a court at a hearing held several hours after he was arrested in Kyiv on his return to Ukraine in the early hours of Nov. 1.
Kaskiv, who was in charge of the Ukrainian State Agency for Investment and National Projects from 2010 to 2014, is suspected of embezzling nearly Hr 7.5. million ($279,000) from the state budget, in cahoots with other persons.
“Kaskiv was taken to the Principal Office of Investigations at the Prosecutor General’s Office,” Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko wrote in the morning of Nov. 1. “This is the first case of an extradition of a high-profile official to Ukraine, but not the last.”
Later Pechersk District Court released Kaskiv on bail of Hr 160,000 ($5,950) for the period of two months of the pre-trial investigation, press secretary of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Larisa Sargan said. He was also obliged to report on his movements and hand over his passport.
She said that Kaskiv’s defenders had provided the court with proof of the full reimbursement of losses to the state, but she couldn’t confirm the amount of money paid.
However, former adviser to Ukraine’s ousted president Viktor Yanukovych Andriy Portnov claimed that Kaskiv hadn’t been extradited to Ukraine, but had surrendered to Ukrainian investigators of his own volition.
“A few months ago Kaskiv asked Panamanian authorities for voluntary extradition to Ukraine, proving to the Panamanian court that he had nothing to hide,” Portnov wrote on his Facebook.
“Then he bought his plane ticket. Yesterday he freely moved around Amsterdam airport and arrived in Kyiv at night, having informed Ukrainian investigators in advance.”
Kaskiv, who fled Ukraine after the collapse of the Yanukovych regime in 2014, was reportedly arrested in Panama in August 2016 under an Interpol Red Notice international arrest warrant. His application for political asylum in Panama was reportedly rejected in March.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Panama wasn’t available for a comment at the time of publication.
