The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has confirmed the detention of a Ukrainian woman in Italy on suspicion of kidnapping minors.
“We officially confirm that a Ukrainian woman was detained by police in Palermo on October 30 on suspicion of committing a series of crimes connected with kidnapping and holding minors,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebyinis told Interfax-Ukraine, citing the Ukrainian embassy in Italy.
The Ukrainian woman is at a penitentiary facility in Palermo. A defense attorney has been attached to her, but she refused to meet with Ukrainian diplomats, he said.
Italian mass media reported on November 1 that former Ukrainian yachtswoman Larysa Moskalenko had been detained on suspicion of being a member of a criminal group that was engaged in trafficking in minors in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Cyprus.
The newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote that Moskalenko was one of the seven arrested suspects. She reportedly lived in Palermo, where she owned a firm that leased out luxury boats and yachts.
She was allegedly a member of an international criminal group, led by Norwegian and Swedish nationals. Nothing was said about their whereabouts.
The magazine Spiegel wrote about a group of former highly-placed officers and about their plans to kidnap children in Cyprus, Lebanon, Egypt and Ukraine.
Moskalenko, 50, was born in Ukraine and she has been residing in Italy in recent years. She is a bronze yachting medalist in Class 407 during the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul (as a member of the Soviet team), the 1991 world champion, and she was in forth place in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona as a member of the team of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
