In Kyiv, Ukrainian officials are working to root out graft, reassure financial backers and secure the country’s path to membership in the European Union.
KYIV, Ukraine — The photos showed hundred-dollar bills lying in piles on furniture and jutting out of a safe — the results of what officials from Ukraine’s main anti-corruption body said last month was a $2.7 million bribery scheme involving the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court, Vsevolod Knyazyev.
Zelensky has called a meeting of his National Security and Defense Council for later this week to discuss judicial reform. “Obviously, [we’re asking] were there other cases [of bribery]?” said a European diplomat in Kyiv, speaking on background because of the sensitivity of the issue. “And of course I’d like to see [whether] the current justice reform was not compromised by Knyazyev.”“It would be absolutely excellent if the Supreme Court were to be able to clean itself, in their house,” the diplomat said.
Law enforcement officers said they found close to $1 million in cash when they raided Knyazyev’s home and office in May, and another $500,000 in a second unidentified location a few days later.denies the charges. At a hearing, he said the cash belonged to “friends,” who “before leaving for abroad, even before the start of the war, asked me to keep this money.”
Shevchuk, the Anti-Corruption Action Center lawyer, said Zelensky has “no role” in Knyazyev’s case and should let NABU and SAPO “do their job.” Last month, officials at the Security Service of Ukraine said they had opened a criminal investigation against another billionaire, Dmytro Firtash, who was accused of embezzling close to $500 million from the state budget over an eight-year period through a gas-purchasing scheme. Firtash lives in Vienna and is battling extradition to the United States on bribery charges. He denies the Ukrainian accusations.
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