The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has caught a Ukrainian governor red-handed accepting a bribe.
NABU did not announce the name of the official, whom it detained on June 25 for soliciting Hr 1.8 million ($67,500) in bribes. However, former Ukrainian lawmaker and Kyiv Post columnist Sergii Leshchenko wrote on his Telegram messenger channel that it was Andrii Balon, governor of Ukraine’s Kirovograd Oblast.
Balon allegedly requested the bribe together with another official, who worked in the same oblast administration. Balon could not be immediately reached for comment.
According to NABU, the accused officials told a third official, the head of a government agency’s regional branch, to pay them Hr 1.8 million for “not interfering in his activities.” Funds had to be transferred in several tranches, NABU reports.
The two officials had already received Hr 100,000 ($3,750) earlier in June. But they were сaught red-handed as they received another Hr 250,000 ($9,370) on June 25.
Photos released by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine show wads of cash in a bag. The bureau said it found significant amounts of cash of unknown origins in the offices and homes of two officials suspected of soliciting bribes. One of those officials has been widely identified as Kirovohrad Oblast Governor Andrii Balon.
Balon was appointed the governor of Kirovohrad Oblast by President Volodymyr Zelensky in November 2019. Prior to that, he worked as a deputy head of the Kherson Oblast State Administration.
Following Balon’s detention, Zelensky fired the official on June 26, the President’s Office stated.
“There is one law for all. Therefore, when I received this information, I immediately said that I would dismiss the head of the (Kirovohrad) Oblast State Administration,” Zelensky said during his visit to Kherson Oblast on June 26.
Later that day, NABU reported that both officials accused of soliciting bribes had received notices of suspicion for “receiving an illegal benefit.”
“In the course of further investigative actions at the place of work and residence of the suspects, large amounts of cash, the origin of which is currently unknown, were confiscated,” NABU wrote in a statement on Facebook.
