Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (FIS) Yehor Bozhok has said that there are no legal grounds to suspend from office his first deputy, Serhiy Semochko, against whom the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is checking information in a criminal case on high treason.
“There are no legal grounds for suspension,” Bozhok told reporters in Kyiv on Oct. 17, when asked why Semochko was not removed from the post.
At the same time, he stressed that FIS was conducting an internal investigation the information about which cannot be disclosed.
According to him, information on the areas overseen by the first deputy head of the FIS is also a state secret.
At a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada committee on preventing and combating corruption, Bozhok, answering questions from committee members, said that Semochko had not been denied access to state secrets.
“Depriving someone of access to state secrets is possible only by a court decision,” he said.
Bozhok could not clarify whether Semochko’s car is owned by the FIS. At the same time, SBU First Deputy Head Vitaliy Malikov, who was also present at the committee meeting, said that Semochko’s car was not owned by the SBU.
Earlier it was reported that the Security Service of Ukraine, as part of criminal proceedings initiated on the basis of a statement from journalist Denys Bihus under Part 1 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (high treason), was checking media reports regarding First Deputy Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Serhiy Semochko.
“The pretrial investigation authority plans to involve Bihus and his team in procedural cooperation to investigate the circumstances set out in the journalistic investigation,” the SBU said on its Facebook page.
At the same time, the special service recalled that information on Semochko’s wealth and possible illegal enrichment was being verified by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine as part of criminal proceedings opened under Part 3 of Article 368-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Earlier, the anti-corruption investigation program “Our Money with Denys Bihus” released a video saying that the family of the first deputy head of the Foreign Intelligence Service and the former head of the economic counterintelligence service of the SBU, Serhiy Semochko, owns houses worth millions of dollars near Kyiv and that his relatives have Ukrainian and Russian citizenship.
The NABU opened proceedings in the case on illegal enrichment involving Semochko.
