You're reading: Court detains Odesa judge after he fires at Anti-Corruption Bureau officers

A Kyiv court on April 1 detained Oleksiy Buran, an infamous Odesa judge who fired a gun at the officers as they tried to arrest him on suspicion of corruption.

He would stay in custody for at least two months without the option of bail.

National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) accused him of receiving a bribe of Hr 500,000 ($19,000). NABU didn’t say what the bribe was offered for.

Buran denied the corruption accusations, saying that the evidence obtained by NABU “does not correspond the reality.”

When NABU and police officers came to search Buran’s house on March 29, he opened fire and ran away.

“Considering his immunity as a judge, the officers could not arrest him without an approval by the Verkhovna Rada,” NABU press service said on its website.

The video published by NABU shows how Buran climbs out of the window of his house during the search.

Later on the day of the search, Buran was put in the hospital with the wounds which, doctors said, could be a consequence of an attempted suicide.

Buran later told reporters that he accidentally cut his hand with glass when he broke the window and climbed out of it “to draw his followers’ off his family.” In Buran’s words, he thought that burglars broke into his house.

After medical expertise, Buran appeared in parliament on March 31. Head of Ukraine’s Supreme Court Yaroslav Romanyuk, who was also present at the Verkhovna Rada meeting, urged lawmakers to support an arrest and detention of Buran. During the vote, 255 lawmakers supported the decision to arrest Buran.

The NABU officers arrested him in the Verkhovna Rada after the vote.

Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]