Ukraine arrests officials on live TV, sacks powerful oligarch
KIEV: Ukraine on Wednesday dramatically arrested two top officials on graft charges at a televised cabinet meeting hours after the president sacked a powerful oligarch as regional governor.
The unexpected shake-up came as the beleaguered authorities, already struggling to combat pro- Russian separatists in the country’s east, tried to make good on pledges to tackle rampant graft and curb the inf luence of the country’s powerful business magnates.
Police detained Sergiy Bochkovsky, director of Ukraine’s state emergencies service, and his deputy Vasyl Stoyetsky, in full glare of journalists and photographers, accusing them of ‘high-level’ corruption.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said the sight of handcuffed officials being marched out of a government meeting served as a warning to other officials suspected of graft, with international backers in the West demanding Ukraine stamp out corruption.
“This will happen to everyone who breaks the law and sneers at the Ukrainian state. When the country is at war and when we are counting every penny, they steal from people,” Yatsenyuk said.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the two men were suspected of overpaying for public procurements from companies including Russian oil giant Lukoil, and channeling the excess funds into offshore accounts.
Meanwhile, the ongoing conflict between government forces and pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine claimed at least three more lives Wednesday when a passenger bus drove over a landmine, police said.
The accident happened near the government-held town of Artemivsk, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
“The driver had wanted to avoid a Ukrainian checkpoint near Artemivsk by going through the field and he drove over a landmine,” a spokesman for the Donetsk regional administration told AFP, putting the toll at four dead.
Despite a shaky ceasefire agreed over a month ago, occasional skirmishes have continued and rural roads and fields in the conf lict zones are strewn with landmines.
Overnight, President Petro Poroshenko announced that billionaire Igor Kolomoisky had offered to step down as governor of the key industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk after a dispute over control of the country’s largest oil producer ended up with armed men storming the offices of two state- controlled oil firms.
“The president of Ukraine confirmed Igor Kolomoisky’s request to resign” at a meeting between the two men in Kiev, the presidency said in a statement.
The banking tycoon was appointed to the post after the ouster of Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych last year and he has proved a bulwark against the pro-Russian rebellion rocking neighbouring eastern regions.
He funded a powerful volunteer militia group that has played a leading role in fighting the heavily- armed insurgents, even offering a 20,000 reward for any separatists captured and handed to authorities in Dnipropetrovsk. — AFP