Yanukovych, Azarov declared wanted by Interpol

KYIV – It took almost a year but Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, has finally issued wanted person alerts for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, and two of their associates on charges of embezzlement and misappropriation.
They are being pursued by the Ukrainian government, which submitted an alert request as early as March 2014 for Mr. Yanukovych for abuse of power and murder charges. Yet Interpol revealed in its January 12 statement that it didn’t respond because the request wasn’t compliant with its rules and regulations.
Procurator General Vitalii Yarema claims he filed the alert requests for the current charges months earlier, but Interpol hesitated because of the suspicion that they were politically motivated.
All the key Yanukovych administration officials fled abroad, mostly to
the Russian Federation.
In the view of Kyiv political expert Vitalii Bala, the Ukrainian government bears responsibility for failing to get the alerts issued earlier. “From the point of view of timeliness, then these statements have come very late, which means there was incomplete work from within the country,” said Mr. Bala, the director of the Agency for Modeling Situations.
At the same time, “from the view of a careful optimist, it’s a signal that all the law enforcement organs, above all the Procurator General of Ukraine, has begun to work in this direction and at minimum, is preparing all the necessary regulatory measures to extradite them to Ukraine, one way or another, under certain conditions,” he said.
Interpol’s decision came as criticism has been mounting of the current government’s failure to successfully criminally prosecute those who ordered and committed the shootings and killings in the winter of 2014 of Euro-Maidan activists. More than 100 were killed, and more than 1,000 were injured or missing.
All the key Yanukovych administration officials fled abroad, mostly to the Russian Federation.
As many as 5,000 people fled to Russia – that number includes officials, their relatives, and support and service staff, reported the gazeta.ua news site. For example, 21 bodyguards accompanied Mr. Yanukovych, packing themselves into two helicopters during his flight following the Euro-Maidan massacre.
Former Energy Minister Eduard Stavytskyi is reportedly pursuing Israeli citizenship, claiming Jewish lineage through his grandmother, while former Procurator General Viktor Pshonka and his son Artem are reported to have gained Kazakh citizenship, which they deny, reported gazeta.ua
Meanwhile, some of the handful of police officers who were arrested have escaped custody and gone into hiding. Most notably, Dmytro Sadovnyk, the commander of a Berkut unit alleged to be responsible for as many as 39 killings, was released under house arrest in mid-September 2014.
He appeared for a September 25 court hearing before being reported by his wife to have disappeared on October 3. His disappearance prompted President Petro Poroshenko to express his shock on Twitter.
Another high-ranking officer, former deputy chief of the Kyiv police Petro Fedchuk, who is charged with interfering with lawful assemblies and is wanted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), has since taken Russian citizenship and wasted no time in finding employment in Moscow law enforcement, the Ukrayinska Pravda news site reported.
The site posted a video recording showing Mr. Fedchuk making arrests during the December 30, 2014, protest on Manezh Square in central Moscow following the criminal convictions of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and his brother.
Ukrainian law enforcement authorities haven’t revealed the identity of the several dozen law enforcement officers it claims to have arrested.
In early December 2014, members of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Corruption Prevention and Counteraction held a hearing in which they asked Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov, SBU Chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko and Procurator General Yarema why no progress had been made in arrests and prosecutions.
Volodymyr Parasiuk, Euro-Maidan hero turned national deputy, reported on Facebook: “Not only did the minister not answer questions about his activity for the last nine months or steps taken to reform the police, but he behaved boorishly in relation to committee members, particularly its head Yegor Sobolev.”
“When he told Avakov that work needs to begin on dismissing all corrupt police officers, he responded, ‘Begin with yourself… Sit down and conduct the hearing properly!’ I wish to remind him that according to the law, Avakov’s status is lower than that of the head or any committee member. So such behavior is absolutely unacceptable and we will react accordingly,” Mr. Parasiuk wrote.
Mr. Parasiuk warned that Mr. Avakov had a month to demonstrate concrete results. Since then, the Interpol alerts were issued and the committee has instead shifted its dissatisfaction towards Mr. Yarema.
On January 14, National Deputy Mustafa Nayyem reported that the parliamentary anti-corruption committee has determined Mr. Yarema’s performance to be unsatisfactory in investigating the crimes of the Yanukovych administration and is preparing a resolution declaring no confidence and requesting his dismissal.
Besides Messrs. Yanukovych and Azarov, Interpol issued wanted person alerts for former Finance Minister Yurii Kobolov and Georgii Dzekon, the former CEO of Ukrtelecom.
The wanted
• Viktor Yanukovych, 64: Within days of his flight, Mr. Yanukovych bought a 30,300-square-foot mansion, situated on five acres, in the exclusive Moscow suburb of Barvykha for $52 million, reported the RBK Russian news agency, citing a former regional state official. The mansion is about a kilometer from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official residence. He reportedly fled with his mistress, Liubov Polezhai, and has since filed for divorce from his longtime wife, Liudmyla.
Since his flight, Mr. Yanukovych gained Russian citizenship and has appeared in numerous press conferences and video statements, criticizing the radicals and politicians of the Euro-Maidan protest, as well as the current Ukrainian government. In late November, he gave an interview to a Moscow newspaper in which he said that Presidential Administration Chair Serhiy Lyovochkin was responsible for the police beating of students the early morning of November 30, 2014, that he was afraid that radicals were going to attack him the next day, and that he knew he could have remained president had he signed the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, but was acting in the nation’s interests when not signing it. He denied financing the pro-Russian separatists, as alleged by Ukrainian government officials.
Economic sanctions were imposed against Mr. Yanukovych by European Union officials, but they may be removed this year if the Ukrainian government doesn’t prosecute him, reported the Ekonomichna Pravda news site. Incredibly, Mr. Yanukovych still has businesses in Ukraine that continue to receive orders from state enterprises, the news site reported. And a Kyiv court ruled in December 2014 that the helipad in the city center – believed to be owned by a firm controlled by Mr. Yanukovych – was built legally.
• Oleksandr Yanukovych, 41: The president’s elder son, who famously became an overnight mega-millionaire owing to his convenient ties, is residing in Russia and recently launched a construction business in St. Petersburg with his business entourage, he told a Russian newspaper in November 2014. In the same interview, in which he gave written responses, he denied financing the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas. Shortly after the Euro-Maidan, his bank accounts were frozen by the prosecutors of Switzerland, Austria and Lichtenstein, which reportedly have been investigating the Ukrainian government’s money-laundering and other corruption-related allegations. During his father’s presidency, he reportedly accumulated almost half a billion dollars on the Swiss bank accounts of his firm MAKO Trading SA.
In late November, the Internal Affairs Ministry said its investigations of the Euro-Maidan crimes determined Mr. Yanukovych assisted his father in organizing the killings, an accusation that he denied. The ministry is also continuing to investigate tax evasion allegations against him. One of his banks being investigated, Vseukrayinskyi Bank Rozvytku, is still doing business, with outlets and ATMs operating in Kyiv.
• Mykola Azarov, 67: Rarely appearing in the press since the Euro-Maidan, he is currently residing in a Moscow suburb, the SBU reported in early December 2014, and he has gained Russian citizenship. In late December, Mr. Azarov filed documents in order to sell a home of his in central Kyiv, though the Procurator General of Ukraine claimed the property has been placed under arrest.
After the Euro-Maidan, Mr. Azarov fled to Austria, whose government joined the Swiss government in freezing his assets on February 28, 2014, at the request of the Ukrainian government. The European Council followed suit shortly afterwards, freezing the assets of 17 top Ukrainian officials who fled, including Messrs. Yanukovych and Azarov. Since then, Mr. Azarov has been active in European courts in trying to remove the sanctions. The SBU placed him on its wanted list in June.
• Oleksii Azarov, 43: Currently in hiding, he has been involved in many alleged financial machinations on behalf of his father. Elected as a national deputy to represent the Donetsk Oblast district where the city of Sloviansk is located, Mr. Azarov is highly criticized for being absent when pro-Russian separatists took over and terrorized the city. Nor has he offered the city any financial support since then, reported journalist Natalia Sokolenko.
Despite being placed under the same EU sanctions as his father, Mr. Azarov has retained ownership and access to his investment in a chain of retail gasoline stations in Germany, which produce 8 million euros in profit annually, reported the Deutsche Welle news agency in early December 2014. Authorities can’t officially establish its owners, the report said. In early January of this year, the Procurator General of Ukraine announced a new investigation into Mr. Azarov, alleging that he unlawfully gained more than $8 million from corrupt schemes in Ukraine.