You're reading: MP Poliakov fails to report to police station, to wear electronic bracelet

Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine deputy Maksym Poliakov (People’s Front Party faction) was supposed to report to the Cherkasy regional police station to be fitted with an electronic bracelet. The MP, however, failed to appear, as agreed, National Police of Ukraine spokesman Yaroslav Trakalo told the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

“Police and agents from the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) waited for him from 11.00 until 14.00 on Saturday at the regional police precinct, but he failed to come,” Trakalo said.

Poliakov, meanwhile, said on Monday in an interview with the 112.Ukraine TV channel that no one had attempted to put a bracelet on him.

“No one has tried to put a bracelet on me, or a collar,” the MP said, adding that he has no plans to hide from investigators.

Poliakov said he would post Hr 300,000 bail.

Poliakov is suspected of violating Part 4 of Article 368 (illegal profiteering) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

NABU agents guided by the agents from the Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) on June 19, 2017 detained seven persons involved in extorting and receiving unlawful profits using a foreign company to carry out amber mining in Ukraine.

Detectives determined the arrested individuals, acting in the interests of MPs Poliakov and Borys Rozenblat, received more than $300,000 in bribes from representatives of the foreign company in order to draft a law on amber mining in favor of the foreign company and submit it to parliament for adoption.

Head of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) Yuriy Lutsenko on June 21 provided parliament with a letter requesting stripping immunity from the deputies and allowing their arrest. The Rada did so on July 11.

On July 21 Kyiv’s Solomiansky District Court remanded Poliakov into pretrial custody, setting bail at Hr 304,000, in addition to setting several requirements. The court also obliged the MP to wear an electronic monitoring device and forbade him from leaving Kyiv and Uman (Cherkasy region) without permission of investigators, prosecutors or the court, as well as to turn over his foreign passports.

The pretrial conditions are in effect until August 19.