The Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture, Mikola Solski, was provisionally released this Friday after paying bail of 1.8 million euros, hours after he was arrested on charges of corruption. Solski is investigated for a possible crime of misappropriation of land in several operations carried out before the war. According to the agencies, his deputy, Markiyan Dmytrasevich, is also involved in the case, who could not be arrested as he was outside the country on a trip linked to the start of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the agrarian bloc of the European Union. . The EU has precisely been very belligerent with the kyiv Government about the transparency standards that it must meet if it wants to enter.
The situation is nothing short of bizarre. The minister drafted his resignation from office on Thursday, but it must be ratified by Parliament, according to the politician's lawyer. As it has not yet been formalized and Solski is currently free, he could return to head the ministry, at least until his resignation is confirmed. All of this puts President Zelensky in trouble at a delicate moment in which the population's unrest is growing by leaps and bounds at the repetition of investigations into corruption or fraud in the country; something that not even the war has managed to stop.
The National Anti-Corruption Agency formally announced the accusation against the minister on Tuesday and this Friday a judge ordered his preventive detention. According to the court order, he is suspected of being involved between 2017 and 2018 in operations to illegally seize 2,500 hectares of agricultural fields belonging to the State valued at 6.8 million euros in the Sumy region. He later tried to obtain other land worth about 4 million, but the process was not concluded: the Prosecutor's Office and the Police were already on the trail.
Apparently, the plots were attached to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences. The documents that proved its use by this organization were destroyed by officials who are now also among those investigated. From there, some apparently private citizens asked to exercise their right over the lands, which in the Government's view were already unused. Thus they ended up becoming private properties that could later be transferred to holding companies.
Shadows on the ground, whose benefits for cultivation provide high returns, especially in the global cereal sector, are not new. The State owns 700,000 hectares, of which last year it had just under 500,000 in use. Journalistic media affirm that the academy has been an “inexhaustible source of corruption income” for political parties, deputies, officials and companies.
A setback
The ministry reported this Friday that Solski “continues to perform his duties” as head. It was suggested in his circle that he had been the victim of a plot to remove him from public action. «If Parliament decides to accept my resignation, I will be grateful for that decision. “If you decide that I have to continue working, I will continue working,” he stated in the resignation letter, which leaves all doors open. He was an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament in 2019 and appointed Minister of Agriculture in March 2022, a month after the Russian invasion began. Lawyer, he has had, or has, ties with agricultural businesses.
Apart from fueling citizen rage against the turbidity in the country's political and institutional life, the case represents a new setback for Zelensky in the effort to clean house under the watchful eye of the EU. Since the beginning of the war, the Minister of Defense has left the cabinet – without any charges but accused of an obscure case of fraud in the purchase of food for soldiers –, the head of the Prosecutor's Office and the Head of Intelligence, as well as other high-ranking officials. officials and all those responsible for the recruitment funds.
#minister #accused #corruption #free #paying #million #bail #Ukraine #Basque #Journal