Ukraine’s Minister of Agriculture Mykola Solsky has been arrested by authorities on corruption charges.
According to The Guardian, Solsky has been detained as part of a large investigation where charges have been brought against “a dozen other people,” including Ukrainian “civil servants.”
Solsky, who was elected to the Ukrainian parliament in 2019 before being appointed as agriculture minister in 2022, is reportedly being accused of an illegal purchase of land, appraised at about $7 million, during his tenure as lawmaker.
The word “Ukraine” in recent years practically became synonymous with “corruption,” as the post-2014 powers that be in Kiev keep promising to reign in greedy government officials while continuously failing to do so.
It is not immediately clear whether the high-profile corruption investigations conducted by Kiev are genuine or merely serve to alleviate the fears of Ukraine’s Western sponsors who might be reluctant to pour billions of dollars of aid into such a corrupt country.
In another recent case this month, Anglo-German businessman Arnulf Damerau, co-owner of one of the largest online casino operators in Ukraine, complained to media that senior Ukrainian officials allegedly attempted to extort tens of millions of euros from him.