You're reading: Lawyer: Lutsenko detained as part of a new ‘case on abuse of office’

Former Ukrainian Interior Minister and People's Self-Defense Party leader Yuriy Lutsenko was detained as part of a new criminal case in which he is a suspect, Lutsenko's lawyer Ihor Fomin has said.

He said that pre-trial restrictions against Lutsenko had been chosen as part of the completed criminal case (on the abuse of office and the embezzlement of funds), but noted that his client had been detained under a new criminal case in which he is a suspect and that the details of the case had not been disclosed.

"This detention does not concern the case [on Lutsenko’s] driver. It concerns another case on which we have not received any resolution [regarding the opening of a criminal case against Lutsenko under part 3, Article 364 of the Criminal Code – the abuse of office]," Fomin said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.

The former minister’s wife, Iryna Lutsenko, in turn, told reporters that her husband was in a pre-trial detention center.

"He is in a good mood, and he is calm," she said.

She said that such events were predictable. She noted that her husband had been offered to leave the country, but he would not do it in any case.

"He would never allow himself to leave the country so that he is considered a coward… Believe me, he is a fighter," she said.

Human rights defender Kateryna Levchenko, who also attended the conference, said that there were no grounds to arrest Lutsenko. She said that human rights organizations would appeal to the state’s leadership in connection with Lutsenko’s arrest.