Farm Minister imprisoned in Ukraine as charges of fraud are investigated

KYIV: On Friday, a Ukrainian court ruled that Mykola Solsky, the minister of agriculture, must be placed under arrest until a corruption probe into his alleged involvement in the illegitimate purchase of property worth around $7 million by the state is conducted.
The accusations, which include the period between 2017 and 2021 before Solsky took office as agricultural minister in March 2022, have been refuted by Solsky.

A bail of 75.7 million hryvnias ($1.9 million) was issued by the court.
Although Solsky officially submitted his resignation on Thursday, he is still in his position while the parliament considers his request. As far as President Volodymyr Zelenskiyy is concerned, he is the first minister to be designated a suspect in a corruption investigation.
The court ordered Solsky to stay in detention until June 24, while an inquiry was conducted to see whether he needed to be officially charged and tried. At a court hearing on Thursday, prosecutors said that the accusations carried a maximum 12-year prison sentence. Solsky was not available for comment at this time.

The 44-year-old Solsky has been at the forefront of Ukraine’s efforts to maintain its grain sector in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which has closed off Black Sea export routes, scattered landmines over fields, and taken up a sizable amount of agricultural land.
Ukraine has submitted an application to join the European Union, and its minister of agriculture will play a major role in the talks to include the massive grain sector of the nation into the 27-member bloc.
Solsky, according to the prosecution, was a member of a group of twelve officials and businesspeople that planned an expropriation scheme worth 291 million hryvnia ($7.35 million) to take land from two state businesses.
They claim that when a probe was started, the organization gave up on its attempt to illegally transfer further land valued at 190 million hryvnia.
In 2017, Solsky was a practicing attorney. In 2019, he was elected to the legislature and took on the role of chairman of the agricultural policy committee.
Prosecutors said that the original ownership documents for the property had been destroyed and that the land in issue had been given to veterans of the war on the condition that they lease it to certain private companies.
During the hearing on Thursday, Solsky refuted claims that he profited from any such plan.
When contacted by Reuters, a major agricultural union refused to comment on the Solsky detention verdict.
In an effort to demonstrate his zero-tolerance stance against corruption, Zelenskiyy dismissed his defense minister last year in response to accusations of bribery involving the ministry.
As part of larger measures to decrease corruption, the government has enacted changes to get rid of embezzlement schemes that target state firms, promote transparency, and offer more digital public services.
Zelenskiy’s administration has increased asset seizures against firms and people in enterprises that had been collaborating with Moscow and funding pro-Russian media and political groups in Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in 2022.
Tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky was detained by police in September 2023 in one of the biggest anti-corruption investigations on a number of criminal allegations, including massive fraud and forgery. Kolomoisky refutes the accusations.