You're reading: Ecology minister clashes with Yatsenyuk over corruption accusations

Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers wants Parliament to fire Ecology Minister Ihor Shevchenko after he rejected Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's offer that he resign voluntarily.

The minister stands accused of missing Cabinet meetings and giving favors to Oleksandr Onyshchenko, an independent lawmaker and businessman. The Parliament will consider the dismissal of Shevchenko at its next meeting on June 30.

Shevchenko, who’s been ecology minister since December, was accused of using Onyshchenko’s jet in June for a private trip to Europe and appointing an employee of Onyshchenko’s gas producing company as head of the ministry’s National Geology Office. The actions, according to the Cabinet’s letter to the Parliament, qualify as corruption.

Shevchenko admitted he used Onyshchenko’s jet once, to return to Ukraine from a UEFA Champions League final in Berlin earlier in June. But he denied all the corruption charges and criticized the attacks on him.

“It wasn’t an inspection of the situation, but rather an inquisition tribunal from Middle Ages,” Shevchenko wrote on Facebook about the Cabinet meeting that requested his resignation.

Onyshchenko said that Yatsenyuk wanted to remove Shevchenko to gain control over the Ecology Ministry’s National Geology Office.

“It issues the licenses that Yatsenyuk wants,” Onyshchenko said in a statement.

On June 22, following the jet scandal that sparked talks of his resignation, Shevchenko published a video address in which he accused Yatsenyuk of resisting anti-corruption processes in government. In Shevchenko’s words, the representatives of Yatsenyuk and his party, People’s Front, have approached him with recommendations.

“The heads of the government have connections with all the clans in Ukraine and protect their interests,” Shevchenko said in the video.

Yatsenyuk reacted with offering Shevchenko to resign and, when he refused, asking the Parliament to fire the minister.

Before his appointment as minister in December, Shevchenko, 44, had no experience in environmental issues. He owned a law firm and was the first Ukrainian to graduate from Yale’s University World Fellows program. He used to publish Elite Club, a glossy magazine about luxury lifestyle.

During his time in the office, Shevchenko made the news on several infamous occasions. He was widely criticized for writing a Facebook post slamming the bicycle race in Kyiv center because it made him sit in traffic. He apologized for it later.

On another occasion he was scolded by Yatsenyuk during a public Cabinet meeting for not visiting the site of the fire at the oil deposit in Hlevakha in Kyiv Oblast in early June.