Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General will seek a court order on March 28 to extend the detention term for two former senior government figures who are suspected of corruption and whose current 72-hour term of custody expires at noon that day, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on March 27.
Serhiy Bochkovsky and Vasyl Stoyetsky were arrested at a Cabinet meeting on March 25 on suspicion of corruption and were immediately fired as head and deputy head of the State Service for Emergency Situations.
The Office of the Prosecutor General has filed an appeal with Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court against their release but later asked the court to scrap the appeal. Judge Iryna Lytvynova satisfied the request, arguing there was not enough evidence for the two men to be kept behind bars.
“At today’s meeting at the Pechersky Court, the Office recalled its appeal … in order to supplement it with extra counts of charges of corrupt actions, extortions etc. and to urgently file put the supplemented appeal for arrest before the court tomorrow morning,” Avakov said on Facebook.
The case was discussed at a conference on Friday chaired by Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, Avakov said.
“Neither Bochkovsky nor Stoyetsky has any chance of being acquitted by the Office of the Prosecutor General or the Central Investigative Department of the Interior Ministry and of being released. There is convincing evidence of corruption actions on their part,” the minister said.
