Ukraine: Minister of Agriculture, suspected of corruption, released on bail
Cairo: Hani Kamal El-Din
The Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture, placed in pre-trial detention on Friday for corruption charges, was released after paying bail of nearly 1.8 million euros, his ministry announced on Friday April 26, which ensures that he continues to“assume his duties”. Mykola Solsky presented her resignation on Thursday, but it must still be validated by Parliament.
It is the first time that a serving minister has been detained in Ukraine, according to anti-corruption activists in the country. The Anti-Corruption Court had ordered his placement in pre-trial detention until at least June 24. Mykola Solsky worked for a law firm until 2019. He was elected to Parliament that year on the party list of President Volodymyr Zelensky, then appointed minister in March 2022.
Ukraine’s national anti-corruption agency announced on Tuesday that the minister was suspected of having seized public land worth nearly 6.9 million euros, and of having “tried to appropriate other lands” worth nearly 4.5 million euros. To this end, according to the authorities, he acted in concert with officials from the state service responsible for land register and cartography. They are suspected of having appropriated, between 2017 and 2021, nearly 2,500 hectares in the Sumy region, in northeastern Ukraine, through a system that involved the misappropriation of official documents.
Corruption cases regularly emerge in Ukraine, but they usually involve lower-ranking officials. The fight against corruption, endemic in Ukraine for decades, is one of the major conditions set by the Twenty-Seven in kyiv, as part of the procedure for accession to the European Union.
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