You're reading: Irpin mayor suspected of corruption evades investigators

Volodymyr Karpliuk, the mayor of Irpin, a city in Kyiv Oblast, who is suspected of illegally appropriating state land, has failed to appear for interrogation, according to Larysa Sargan, the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Prosecutor General.

She said the mayor’s
whereabouts are currently unknown.

A Ukrainian lawmaker
with the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, Volodymyr Ariev, wrote in a Facebook
publication on July 21 that Karpliuk has left the country. That news came after
reports that the offices and apartments of Karpliuk and Anatoliy Fedoruk, the mayor
of Bucha, another city in Kyiv Oblast, had been searched.

Like Karpliuk, Fedoruk
is suspected of illegally appropriating state land.

Karpliuk denied the allegations
against him in a comment to the 112 TV channel, adding that for security
reasons, he would not say whether he was still in Ukraine.

The mayors of Irpin
and Bucha face from six to 12 years in prison if found guilty of abusing office,
said Volodymyr Guzulyak, the head of special cases in the economics department
of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine.

According to a General
Prosecutor’s Office news release, investigators launched searches of the city
council offices of Irpin and Bucha and also of the private residences of both
mayors and found documents the mayors used to illegally appropriate state land.

Apart from the
documents, law enforcement officers confiscated jewelry, money and other
valuables.

Prosecutors have accused
Fedoruk and Karpliuk of selling the landto Ukrainian government officials and
bodies; 14 hectares of 890 were transfered to the former first deputy of
Verkhovna Rada(until 2014) Ihor Kaletnyk, a Communist Party lawmaker who failed
to win election to the Rada as an independent candidate in 2014. Another 65
hectares were transferred to the National Agricultural University of Ukraine.

Bloc of Petro Poroshenko
lawmaker Olga Chervakova wrote on Facebook on July 21 that in 2015 prosecutors
had asked the courts to return all of the land to state ownership.

“However, after that
court decision came into force, Bucha city council again illegally allocated
seven hectares of forest land for construction. This was the same land that had
already been returned to the state,” wrote Chervakova.

In 2002, when Fedoruk
was already the mayor of Bucha, the city council illegally changed the
official purpose of use of 890 hectares of Bucha forestland and sold it as
building land, wrote Chervakova. The 890 hectares of forestland around Bucha is
also known informally as the “Buchanske Mezhyhirya,” after the estate of the
corrupt ousted former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych.

In his comments to 112
TV channel,Karpliuk said he was angry to have been involved in the investigation
into the illegal appropriation of land near Bucha.

“They (the prosecutors)
came to my place, the place of Irpin’s mayor, and accused me of land thefts
that happened in 2006-2012. I was a student then, and wasn’t involved in any
business or politics,” said Karpliuk.

According to news
website censor.net, in 2011 Karpliuk and Fedoruk created the construction
company Budregioninvest, and registered it in the names of their wives.

Budregionivest subsequently
built four apartment complexes in forestland near Bucha.