Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Yanukovych allies’ diplomatic passports annulled

Oleg Sukhov 

Ukraine’sForeign Ministry annulled 230 diplomatic and service passports in 2014-2015 issued to lawmakers and government officials, many of whom were allies of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.

The ministry, which made the announcement on Jan. 26, attributed the annulment to a May 2015 presidential decree under which such passports cease to be valid in certain cases.

Specifically, they are annulled if they are not returned to the ministry for safekeeping, if they expire or if there are no longer grounds for an official’s possession of a diplomatic or service passport.


The Foreign Ministry’s press office would not elaborate by phone and did not immediately reply to an e-mailed request for comment.

Those deprived of passports include fugitives who worked with Yanukovych.

They are: ex-Health Minister Raisa Boharyreva, ex-Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, former Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov, former Revenue and Tax Minister Oleksandr Klymenko, former Youth and Sports Minister Ravil Safiullin, and ex-presidential chief of staff Andriy Klyuyev.

Others are incumbent lawmakers from the Opposition Bloc, an offshoot of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. These include Yury Boiko, Nestor Shufrich, Oleksandr Vilkul, Natalya Korolevska, Mikhailo Dobkin, Serhiy Kivalov, and Yevhen Bakulin.

The list also includes people who are not currently linked to the Party of Regions or its successors.

These are Oleksiy Honcharenko, a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc; Stepan Barna, an ex-member of the bloc; ex-Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky; Oleksandr Buryak, a former lawmaker from the Batkyvshchyna party, and Viktor Baloha, an independent lawmaker and former chief of staff under ex-President Viktor Yushchenko.




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