You're reading: Another top police official quits over corruption allegations

A fourth high-ranking police official resigned in the past two months after local media uncovered the lavish lifestyle his daughters lead on photo-sharing service Instagram and the luxury cars the family allegedly owns. The two daughters’ father is Oleksandr Yershov, acting head of the traffic police, who declared a monthly income of Hr 12,000 ($1,500) in 2013.

Interior Minister Arsen
Avakov accepted Yershov’s resignation late on May 19, saying on his Facebook
page that an internal investigation is underway into what the media discovered.

However, a group of 18 Ukrainian
lawmakers, nearly half of whom are members of the parliamentary anti-corruption
committee, are calling for the dismissal of Avakov, accusing him of not doing
enough to cleanse his ministry of corrupt officials.

Journalists from Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that Yershov has been concealing his
immediate family’s ownership of four cars worth about $400,000 and a
three-story house in central Kyiv. His daughters were found posting pictures of
themselves on numerous international flights primarily flying business class.

According to the
report, Yershov raised suspicions after he earlier declined to show the 2014 income
declarations of his highest ranking subordinates within the traffic police
directorate. His refusal, according to the investigative journalists,
essentially violated the law on access to public information.

Hours after the May 19 publication
investigation, Yershov resigned.

Yershov was appointed
in early April after his predecessor, Anatoliy Sirenko, resigned amid a number
of alleged corruption schemes that the interior minister had mentioned were revealed
at the state traffic police.

Yershov’s resignation didn’t
deter the group of lawmakers from urging Avakov to leave his ministerial seat,
as he is “professionally unsuitable” for it, according to the group’s
resolution headed by former EuroMaidan activist and journalist Yegor Sobolev.

They filed the draft
resolution on Avakov’s resignation on May 14.

Sobolev, head of the parliament’s anti-corruption committee and
one of the authors of the bill, championed the Yershov’s resignation, but said
it won’t save his former boss.

“It is not enough to
dismiss corrupt officials,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “They shouldn’t be
hired at all.”

Avakov didn’t respond to
Kyiv Post requests for further comment via his Facebook page where he usually
posts ministry-related news before publishing them on the official ministry
website. Four phone calls placed with the interior ministry’s press service
went unanswered.

Yershov’s case is the latest in a series of public
embarrassments concerning the Interior Ministry.

Deputy Interior Minister Serhiy Chebotar resigned a
week ago, after a group of investigative journalists was beaten up near a house
his daughter reportedly owns in Kyiv Oblast.

In his resignation
letter, published on the Interior Ministry’s website on May 13, Chebotar said
he decided to leave because of systematic harassment, defamation and even
threats.

And in April Avakov accepted
the resignation of top investigator Vitaliy Sakal, who was supposed to be
dismissed based on a lustration law meant to cleanse government of officials
who served under the disgraced rule of former President Viktor Yanukovych or in
the Communist Party. He served in law enforcement bodies under the regime of
Yanukovych, who fled to Russia on Feb. 22, 2014, abandoning power.

Sakal stepped down only
after media started questioning the purpose of a police raid at the home and
workplace of a Justice Ministry official who leads the nation’s government
cleansing campaign known as lustration.

Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be
reached at
[email protected].