You're reading: Deputy health minister arrested on bribe charges

Ukrainian Deputy Health Minister Roman Vasylyshyn has been arrested while allegedly receiving a bribe, the Ukrainian authorities have reported.

In an operation in the early hours of July 8, officers from Ukraine’s security
service and prosecutorial investigators detained Vasylyshyn, along with his
associate Yuriy Sernyak, who was alleged to be the person giving the money to
the deputy minister.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko hailed the arrest, saying
that the country’s law enforcement bodies “are finally doing something that
society was expecting us to do.”

According to Lutsenko, Sernyak headed the urology department of Oleksandriyska
Hospital in Kyiv. He was in charge of allocating surgeons to perform specific
operations, but he allowed them to perform operations only if they extorted
money from their patients for what was supposed to be free surgery, Lutsenko
said.

“Sernyak was collecting the money together, and once a week handing it over
to Vasylyshyn,” Lutsenko said at a press conference on July 8.

Depending on the number of operations performed during the week,
Vasylyshyn received from Hr 50,000 to Hr 100,000 ($2,000 to $4,000).

Lutsenko said one of the doctors at the hospital cooperated with law
enforcement, and investigators witnessed five bribe money transfers between
Vasylyshyn and Sernyak.

Lutsenko said that Sernyak had agreed to testify, while Vasylyshyn has refused
to cooperate with the law enforcement bodies.

“We have all the grounds to suspect both men of taking bribes,” Lutsenko
said.

During searches of the apartments of the detained men, investigators
found “more than $50,000, Hr 320,000 ($13,000) and
2,500 ($2,800),” Lutensko said.

Vasyl Hrytsak, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, said he
was shocked by the cynicism of the scheme.

Meanwhile, the press service of the State Fiscal Service reported on
July 8 that Ukrainian prosecutors had also detained an employee of the State
Fiscal Service’s central office while she was in the act extorting $10,000 from
one of her colleagues from a local office.

According to the report, the woman demanded a bribe in return for not prosecuting
the local office employee, who was the subject of an internal investigation.

As with Vasylyshyn, the woman was caught red-handed. She was detained
while receiving the second part of the bribe, worth Hr 125,000 ($5,000), having
received the first part earlier, the State Fiscal Service said.

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