On Saturday night, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv took into custody the former deputy head of the State Security Department Vadym Chuchkovsky, setting bail at UAH 400 million, lawyer Ilia Novikov has said.
“They are demanding that he testify against (leader of the European Solidarity party, the fifth president of Ukraine in 2014-19 Petro) Poroshenko: that allegedly, on his orders, he met a plane from Moscow with “money for the elections” at the end of March 2019,” Novikov said on Facebook.
At the same time, he referred to a video, which, according to him, by all indications was filmed by the FSB of the Russian Federation at the Russian Sheremetyevo Airport in 2019, in which unknown people hand over several suitcases of cash allegedly for the elections. In Kyiv, some of them were taken by another unknown person. Investigators claim that it was Chuchkovsky.
“Chuchkovsky was interrogated when he refused to incriminate himself, his former boss Fedorov and Poroshenko, a report appeared that according to operational data, Chuchkovsky and Fedorov were preparing to destroy material evidence, so an urgent search without a court order was needed. Such urgent searches six years after the events have always been the signature style of the FSB. They didn’t find anything interesting, but no one expected to find it,” Novikov wrote.
According to him, Chuchkovsky was detained and notified of suspicion under Article 426-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (abuse of official authority by a military person).
“This and the bail of 500 million (the court humanely reduced it to 400) – a clear message: say that you followed the order and then we will let you go. The same story happened in 2021 with suspicion of Deputy Defense Minister General Pavlovsky and Director of Kuznya na Rybalskom Shandra, who were also assigned bail of UAH 475 and 444 million and also required to testify against Poroshenko. Pavlovsky then won the case involving his arrest at the European Court for Human Rights. This story was completely forgotten after 2022, but we remember. Now the same thing is happening again,” Novikov added.