Fugitive judge Mykola Chaus was found in Ukraine’s Vinnytsya Oblast on July 30 and detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Chaus, who once worked at Kyiv’s Dnipro District Court, was caught by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) receiving a $150,000 bribe in 2016, after which he fled to Moldova.
He was kidnapped in Moldova by Ukrainian authorities on April 3, 2021 and transported back to Ukraine, according to Moldovan Prosecutor General Alexandru Stoianoglo.
Ukraine’s military intelligence previously denied being implicated in Chaus’ kidnapping. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in April that “Ukraine was not involved in the situation with Chaus.”
“Chaus was not kidnapped on the orders of the President’s Office,” President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokesman Serhiy Nikiforov told the Kyiv Post.
Asked whether Ukrainian military intelligence or other government bodies could have been involved in Chaus’ kidnapping, Nikiforov said he could only comment on the President’s Office.
The SBU argued that it had not kidnapped Chaus and was complying with the law.
Chaus found
Chaus came to the village council building in the village of Mazurivka in Vinnytsya Oblast on July 30, Valery Hrunkovsky, head of the village council, told the Slidstvo.info investigative journalism project. Chaus told him that he had been kidnapped.
“He came here wearing shorts,” Hrunkovsky said. “He was dirty, with a naked torso. He was also hungry, and we fed him.”
Later employees of the Security Service of Ukraine came and took Chaus, Hrunkovsky added.
Yury Butusov, chief editor at the censor.net news site, cited his sources as saying that Chaus had allegedly been arrested by the police but that the SBU then snatched him from the police by force. The police are planning to arrest the SBU employees involved, he said.
Butusov said that Chaus had allegedly reached a deal with the President’s Office and the SBU that his case would be transferred from the NABU to the SBU in exchange for his cooperation with the President’s Office. Nikiforov denied the President’s Office’s alleged involvement.
The SBU denied violating the law. The service argued that it had Chaus in its custody because it was investigating his kidnapping.
The NABU said in a statement that the law enforcement officers who detained Chaus had not contacted NABU detectives.
“We call on the law enforcement officers to comply with the law and transfer the suspect wanted by the detectives to authorized representatives of the NABU,” the bureau said.
Kidnapping suspects
The alleged kidnappers of Chaus are linked to Ukraine’s military intelligence, according to an April 8 report by Ukraine’s Slidstvo.Info investigative project and Moldova’s RISE Moldova investigative site. RISE Moldova has obtained the passport data of 10 people being investigated by Moldovan authorities in the kidnapping case.
Meanwhile, Moldova’s NewsMaker site also reported in April that Moldovan authorities had applied for lifting immunity from a Ukrainian diplomat allegedly implicated in the kidnapping.
Chaus was transported to Ukraine in April in a car owned by the Ukrainian embassy in Moldova and driven by Serhiy Smetanyuk, a military attaché at the embassy, according to Slidtsvo.info. Smetanyuk refused to comment to Slidtsvo.info.
Escape in 2016
RISE Moldova and Slidtsvo.info also cited a leaked 2020 document from Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court that referred to the NABU investigation into Chaus’ escape from Ukraine in 2016.
According to the document, Chaus’ flight from Ukraine was organized by Yury Fyodorov, one of ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s security guards, Dorin Damir, an associate of Moldovan oligarch Plahotniuc, and Vyacheslav Turcu, a Moldovan-born resident of Ukraine, according to the document. Damir and Turcu denied the accusations.
Anti-corruption activists have accused Chaus of being under the control of Poroshenko and his ally, lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky. Both previously denied accusations of influencing law enforcement.
Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party denied the accusations.
“We are asking the Kyiv Post not to spread fake news spread by the propagandists of Zelensky, who gave an order to intelligence agencies to kidnap Chaus in Moldova, according to journalist investigations,” the party said.
The anti-corruption court document also mentions that Andriy Smyrnov, who is currently a deputy chief of staff for Zelensky, was one of the people who allegedly helped Chaus flee. According to the document, Smyrnov drove Chaus to his hiding place in the Alpine Residential Complex, an expensive apartment complex in Kyiv.
Smyrnov denied the accusations.
