From Derkach to Odarchenko: how Ukrainian officials run away from punishment
On 18 September, it became known that MP Andrii Odarchenko, suspected by anti-corruption authorities of bribing officials of the Ministry of Infrastructure, had disappeared from Ukraine.
This was stated by the prosecutor of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office during a hearing on the MP's case, the "Anti-Corruption Action Centre" reported.
The SAPO suggested that the MP left Ukraine through Zakarpattia region.
According to the AntAC, Odarchenko was not in the Verkhovna Rada today either. Earlier, he handed in his passports.
"The MP did not inform the court and the prosecutor about the reasons for his absence. The defence lawyers of the accused also failed to inform the court about the whereabouts of their client and emphasise the lack of communication with him. In view of this, the prosecutor initiated in court the issue of collecting the bail set as a preventive measure for the MP, imposing a monetary penalty on him, as well as putting him on the wanted list," the SAPO said in a statement.
According to preliminary intelligence from detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Odarchenko illegally crossed the state border.
Now they are trying to find information about Odarchenko's whereabouts through requests to law enforcement agencies in other countries.
Odarchenko is not the first person to mysteriously disappear from the radar during the investigation of the case against him.
It is even more unfortunate that this happened less than three weeks after another former "Servant of the People", Andrii Dmytruk, disappeared from Ukraine.
As it is known, on 29 August, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) put on the international wanted list the MP who had fled the country on the eve of being served with a notice of suspicion of 4 crimes, including beating people.
On 24 August, the MP crossed the border, travelling first to Moldova and then to Italy. It was first reported by UP journalists.
And only the next day, the Prosecutor General's Office notified the deputy of suspicion for assaulting a law enforcement officer and a soldier.
This escape even affected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who called a meeting with the heads of law enforcement agencies.
On 27 August, Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin said that Dmytruk had been helped to escape.
"This person did not cross the state border alone. Someone helped him. And it is possible that among those who helped, there may be officials of various bodies," Kostin said. "We are making efforts to identify them and establish the whole situation, how it happened," the prosecutor general assured at the time.
And on 2 September, the SBI served suspicion notices to three people who helped organise such escapes. However, two of them had already fled abroad by that time.
Meanwhile, Dmytruk himself was already hanging out in London's shopping malls.
In other words, in 3 weeks, the law enforcement system has shown that it is unable to stop such escapes. Or, it is not very resistant to it.
And both conclusions are very bad for the state.
Because it is not only about institutional failure, but also about the fact that many high-profile cases will remain suspended in the air and they will not face real punishment.
At least, this is evidenced by the most high-profile cases of recent years.
MP Andrii Derkach, accused of treason, fled Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. According to law enforcement officials, Derkach received at least $567,000 from Russian special services for subversive activities against Ukraine. However, last week he became a senator from Astrakhan region.
Similarly, pro-Russian OPFL Yevhen Muraiev, Medvedchuk's associate Taras Kozak, and former Party of Regions member Natalia Korolevska fled Ukraine.
Another OPFL MP, Oleh Voloshyn, fled Ukraine via Belarus. And former Party of Regions member Oleksandr Yefremov, who is still unclear whether he has even served a sentence under the last two presidents, fled the country before the full-scale election.
Andrii Portnov and his son Ihor also left Ukraine. The young man of military age left as a volunteer.
Lawyer Andrii Dovbenko, a defendant in the NABU case on embezzlement of almost UAH 500 million, had previously fled to the UK. At one time, he was called the watchdog of the Ministry of Justice.
Political opponents of the current government have also fled Ukraine. Ihor, the son of former First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Oleh Hladkovskyi, did not return to Ukraine after he went abroad in 2022, allegedly on business. He is a defendant in a case of abuse in the procurement of components for Ukroboronprom.
In April 2024, his father, Oleh Hladkovskyi, was also put on the wanted list. In March 2022, the court transferred the bail in favour of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and changed the measure of restraint to a personal commitment. After that, the accused stopped appearing at court hearings, and according to the NABU and the SAPO, he went abroad.
Yaroslav Dubnevych, a defendant in the NABU case on railway abuse, also fled Ukraine.
A few days before the notification of suspicion, the former head of the National Bank, Kyrylo Shevchenko, left Ukraine on a business trip and did not return.
The day before the full-scale invasion, the former head of the SSU's internal security department, Andrii Naumov, who was known as Bakanov's wallet, disappeared from Ukraine.
A few months ago, Ukraine witnessed a love story with criminal overtones when former Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova drove businessman Gennadii Boholiubov to the train station, who then left the country by train using someone else's documents, using the passport details of a 67-year-old resident of Volyn Oblast.
Boholiubov is a defendant in the Privatbank case.
On 7 April 2023, former head of the SPF Dmytro Sennychenko fled Ukraine. It happened immediately after searches at his home.
In March, the NABU announced suspicions to a number of individuals, including the head of the former SPF, Dmytro Sennychenko, for laundering funds from state-owned companies such as the OPP and the United Mining and Chemical Company.
Among those suspected in the case are Kolot and his relative Andrii Hmyrin, who has been repeatedly mentioned by the media as someone who promoted the interests of "Agro Gas Trading" under both President Poroshenko and President Zelenskyy.
Two years before the war, Hmyrin had a huge influence on the Presidential Office. As Yurii Butusov wrote, he advised the leadership of the Presidential Office. He was so successful that he was able to get his candidate to head the Bureau of Economic Security. Who then successfully failed in his job.
But the saddest thing is not this, but the fact that at least some of the defendants in this case, who were outside Ukraine in time, including a certain Vladyslav Klishchar, became involved in another criminal deal in 2022, as a result of which Ukraine did not receive 100,000 mines for which it paid triple.
In February 2022, the NABU detained Kyiv City Council member Vladyslav Trubitsyn for selling permits for the placement of kiosks in the Obolon district of Kyiv. As part of the pre-trial restraint, prosecutors read out the materials of covert investigative (detective) actions, which indicated that Trubitsyn went to report on the margin once a month not to anyone, but to the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office, Oleh Tatarov.
In the summer of 2023, Trubitsyn fled Ukraine for Israel with his friend, based on a letter from the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine that he was a volunteer. Trubitsyn was last reported to be living in Haifa under a different name.
Many of the people mentioned in the text disappeared from the country after the High Anti-Corruption Court changed their arrest to a commitment.
Now the same measures are being applied to the former head of the Supreme Court, Vsevolod Knyazev, who recently decided to take a walk in the border areas of Zakarpattia. The same measures have been applied to the key defendant in the corruption case at the Ministry of Defence, former head of the procurement department, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, and former head of the military-technical policy department, Oleksandr Liev, who is involved in the "Lviv Arsenal" case.
Similarly, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the AMCU, accused of illicit enrichment, has not been arrested or even fired.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor. NET
