Petro Melnyk, the ex-rector of the National State Tax Service University who escaped from house arrest on Aug. 9, was reportedly helped by his friends in law enforcement and could be hiding in neighboring Belarus.
According to a source in the Interior
Ministry, quoted by daily
newspaper Vesti, Melnyk’s friends working in law enforcement helped him
remove an
electronic monitor bracelet while under house arrest.
“The bracelet sends an alarm signal
quite often. For
instance, when the battery is running out or if the detainee
goes to the
basement. So, the monitoring operator sends police to the house
only if the
signal persists for 10-15 minutes,” Vesti quotes their source in
the
Interior Ministry speaking on the condition of anonymity because
he is not authorized
to speak to the press.
According to Vesti, the bracelet was
removed from Melnyk’s wrist
and was attached to another person’s wrist who spent the night
in Melnyk’s
house. In the morning, the person removed the bracelet and left
before the
police got to the scene.
On Aug. 11 the Kyiv Oblast
prosecutor’s office said they launched
a criminal case for official negligence against the police
officers in charge
of electronically monitoring Melnyk.
“The (preliminary) audit found a
number of irregularities in the
actions of officials who carry out such control at the remote
monitoring
station,” reads the Kyiv Oblast prosecutor’s statement. “In
particular, these
individuals did not promptly react to the bracelet’s alarm
signal, improperly
determined the cause and circumstances of this, and did not
ensure timely
action to determine the location of the person (who was being
electronically
monitored and under house arrest.”
The police officers face between two
to five years in prison if
found guilty.
Meanwhile, media reports speculated
that Melnyk, 56, left Ukraine
and is likely to be hiding in neighboring Belarus. In turn, Melnyk’s lawyer
Oleksiy Nazarenko has his own version of what has happened –
albeit a bizarre
one.
He says that his client was kidnapped.
“The media reported that Melnyk is a
millionaire, and even
gave his home address. I think it was a professional criminal
group, and we
will hear from them soon,” Nazarenko told media on Aug. 11.
Melnyk was detained on July 27 on
suspicion of accepting bribes of
Hr 40,000 ($5,000) and Hr 80,000 ($10,000) from two individuals
on behalf of relatives
for enrollment to the university. Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court
on Aug. 1
ruled to place Melnyk under house arrest on suspicion of
bribery.
Immediately
after his detention, Melnyk complained of heart problems and
claimed to have underwent
heart surgery. However, when asked by journalists to show signs
of surgery, he
showed his thigh wrapped in bandaged gauze. Kyiv’s chief
cardiologist, Leonid
Kushnir, told journalists outside the courtroom that Melnyk
refused to be
examined and added that he found no evidence that Melnyk had
heart-related
surgery.
House arrest is a novelty in Ukrainian
legislature introduced in
the new Criminal code which came into force in late 2012. Melnyk
was one of the
first people to be placed under house arrest.
According to the official web portal
of public procurement,
Ministry of Interior bought 856 tracking bracelets and
monitoring equipment for
Hr 19.18 million from Benish GPS Ukraine company, a subsidiary
of
Malta-registered Benish Group.
The company did not respond to a Kyiv
Post request for comment. The
Ministry of Interior says that some people under house arrest
have tried to remove
their bracelets, but they never succeeded.
“There were cases when detainees were
cutting the bracelets,
trying to get free, but the bracelet reacted with alarming
signals and
operators have seen it,” said Serhiy Burlakov, representative of
the Ministry
of Interior, on Aug. 12.
Infamous
rector
Melnyk headed the State Tax Service
University in the town of
Irpin in Kyiv Oblast since 1991. As rector, he was secretly
filmed on Nov. 19,
2004, while addressing the university’s student body in an
auditorium,
campaigning for Viktor Yanukovych during the latter’s failed bid
for the
presidency that year. He was also head of the Party of Regions
branch in Kyiv
Oblast during that time.
Published on YouTube in March 2012,
the video shows Melnyk
ordering students to obtain absentee ballots and vote for
Yanukovych.
“It’s quite clear
to me that Viktor Yanukovych will be president,” he tells the
audience. “All of
us will vote for him at the polls… you shall all get absentee
ballots and vote
for him… he who doesn’t want to obtain an absentee ballot can go
home and stay
there.”
Melnyk also served two terms as a
member of parliament: in
1998-2002, and 2007-2012, the latter under the Party of Regions
ticket.
Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana
Tuchynska can be reached at
[email protected]
