Solomyansky District court of Kyiv on Dec. 3 released the former head of the State Fiscal Service Myroslav Prodan without bail, on the recognizance of nine lawmakers while charges of alleged embezzlement against him are investigated.
Prosecutors asked the judge to arrest Prodan for 60 days or release him on bail of Hr 89 million ($3.2 million) – a sum equal to the amount Prodan is alleged to have stolen over the course of two years as he served as a deputy head and then the acting head of Ukraine’s main tax agency, from July 2016 to September 2018.
According to the prosecutors, Prodan spent the embezzled money on luxury cars and real estate in Kyiv and Turkey, which he registered under another person’s name to conceal its real ownership.
At the court hearing on Dec. 3, nine lawmakers of the Ukrainian parliament offered surety for Prodan, including David Makaryan, Mykola Palamarchuk, Hennadiy Tkachuk, Mykola Kucher, Maksym Kuryachyi, and Vadym Denysenko – all from the majority 134-seat Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction in the parliament.
Prodan was obliged to wear an electronic tag. Anti-corruption prosecutors said they would appeal against the decision.
Prosecutors also claimed that Prodan had ignored multiple summons for questioning. He left Ukraine for Europe on Nov. 5, and for some time his whereabouts were unknown.
The former top official, however, denied that he was seeking to evade justice and assured the judge that he did not intend to flee. He said he had been undergoing medical treatment at the Bayreuth clinic in Germany and had returned to Ukraine on Nov. 26.
