Ukraine's former Acting Defense Minister Valeriy Ivaschenko has claimed that he and his wife obtained a status of refugee in Denmark.
“I’m ready to say and, even if required, to show the official document, which I and my wife had got from the immigration service of Denmark on January 31, 2013, which says: you receive asylum in Denmark as a refugee in line with the Danish law on foreigners, paragraph 7, section 1 and the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees [CRSR] of July 28, 1951, referring to Article 1 of the convention,” he said in an interview with Radio Liberty.
Ivaschenko said that the refugee terminal means a person who flees from the country in search of refuge, as in time of political oppression, or religious or race persecution, who is not protected by the country and or does not want to use this protection due to fears of being pursued.
The former official also said that his children left Ukraine earlier for the place of education than he and his wife did and they are not staying in Denmark.
Answering the question if he is engaged in political activity linked to Ukraine in Denmark, he said that he will do this.
“I’ll try to get in touch with the Danish Helsinki Committee, which actively helped me when I was staying in jail: when under an initiative of the Danish Helsinki Committee a monitoring of the law situation was conducted and they made a report to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly [PACE]. Real work on my release was started when representatives of the Committee arrived and studied the criminal case opened against me,” he said.
On February 13, 2013, tyzhden.ua reported that Ivaschenko was granted political asylum under the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Foreign Ministry of Denmark laconically commented on the issue by confirming the information.
Later, the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine said that Ivaschenko has received a residence permit in Denmark, rather than political asylum.
Ivashchenko, who served in then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s government from June 2009 to March 2010, was arrested in August 2010 over his alleged involvement in the illegal privatization of a shipbuilding plant in the Crimean port of Feodosiya, which caused an estimated $8.8 million in damages to Ukraine’s budget.
On April 12 2012 he was sentenced to 5 years of jail. Ivashchenko denied any wrongdoing, calling the verdict unjust and politically motivated. The verdict and long term pre trial detention of Ivashchenko were criticized by the Helsinki Human rights group, European Union and USA.
In June 2012 The European Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of Article 3 (inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that Ukraine had failed to comply with its obligations under Article 34 (right to individual petition) as regards the authorities’ refusal to provide Ivashchenko with copies of documents for his application to the European Court of Human Rights.
On Aug. 14, 2012 the Kyiv court of appeal changed the verdict to the suspended prison sentence.
