Anti-corruption investigators on Wednesday launched a probe into alleged illegal enrichment by a top Ukrainian intelligence official whose family reportedly owns three villas valued at millions of dollars.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) targeted Sergiy Semochko, a deputy head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, after a high-profile investigative report that sparked public outrage.
NABU’s press office confirmed to AFP that a case had been opened into property purchases by Semochko.
He faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted.
Semochko has held top positions in Ukraine’s security service since 2015, following his transfer to Kiev from Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014.
While details of his income, assets, and family are scant, the TV programme “Nashi Groshi” said his common-law wife had been identified.
Tetyana Lysenko and her daughter Anastasiya are the official owners of three villas near Kiev, which have a total value of $8 million (nearly seven million euros), according to the programme.
The family leads a luxurious lifestyle and often uses a private helicopter, it said.
The TV reporters said they found evidence in Russian tax records and public registries that eight of Samochko’s relatives have Russian citizenship.
Neither Ukraine’s president, who appointed Semochko, nor the security service itself, had commented.
“This is a deadly danger to hundreds of true intelligence officers and a threat to all of us,” Ukrainian MP Yegor Sobolev wrote on Facebook after the report was published on the internet Monday.
Ukraine is mired in corruption and poverty and battling a Russian-backed separatist insurgency in the east.
The country was ranked 130th out of 180 on Transparency International’s corruption perception index in 2017.
AFP
