Yevhen Metzger, the chairman of state-owned Ukreximbank, who temporarily stepped down after being filmed ordering his security to attack journalists in his office, was placed under nighttime house arrest until Dec. 5.
As part of their pre-trial detention ordered by the Holosiivskyi District Court in Kyiv, Metzger and Ukreximbank internal policy director Volodymyr Pikalov are banned from leaving their homes from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. A third suspect in the attack, bank security director Ihor Telbizov, has been ordered to attend court when summoned.
All three have been suspended without pay from Ukreximbank following the incident. They face assault charges.
The incident occurred on Oct. 4 at the bank’s headquarters in Kyiv, when Schemes journalists Kirill Ovsyaniy and Oleksandr Mazur were recording an interview with Metzger as part of an anti-graft investigation.
Schemes is a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty project that airs on two TV channels in Ukraine and publishes its investigations online.
According to Schemes head Natalie Sedletska, a question posed by the journalists sparked an angry reaction from the chairman, who ordered his security service to seize and delete all data recorded by the journalists during the interview.
Metzger and his associates reportedly locked the journalists at the office for nearly an hour and threatened them. At the program’s request, the Kyiv police launched a criminal investigation.
Ukreximbank denied taking any forceful actions and stated that the interview had to be terminated due to journalists posing questions on bank client information considered confidential.
Nonetheless, on Oct. 5, Schemes managed to restore and publish the deleted video. The recording plainly shows Metzger and his security team threatening the journalists and seizing their memory drives by force.
Metzger has since apologized for his outburst and agreed to step down for the duration of the investigation.
