Politics

Ex-Zelensky's party lawmaker sentenced to jail in bribery case

2 min read
Ex-Zelensky's party lawmaker sentenced to jail in bribery case
Lyudmila Marchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament in an undated photo. (Lyudmila Marchenko / Facebook)

The High Anti-Corruption Court on March 19 sentenced Lyudmila Marchenko, a lawmaker who previously represented President Volodymyr Zelensky's party, to two years in prison in a bribery case.

An aide of the member of parliament was also jailed for two years in the same case.

Marchenko was charged in 2023 with receiving an $11,300 bribe for allegedly influencing regional officials to allow men eligible for military service to go abroad. She was expelled from Zelensky's Servant of the People party.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) published recordings of Marchenko discussing the bribe and video footage with an attempt by her to get rid of the evidence by throwing cash over her fence.

Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Oleksandr Klymenko said in January that 41 members of the current parliament had been charged in different corruption cases.

In December the NABU charged five lawmakers from the Servant of the People with taking cash in exchange for parliamentary votes.

Another corruption scandal erupted in January, when Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, was charged with offering bribes to members of parliament.

Tymoshenko offered bribes to lawmakers from the Servant of the People party, a law enforcement source told the Kyiv Independent.

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Oleg Sukhov

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Oleg Sukhov is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He is a former editor and reporter at the Moscow Times. He has a master's degree in history from the Moscow State University. He moved to Ukraine in 2014 due to the crackdown on independent media in Russia and covered war, corruption, reforms and law enforcement for the Kyiv Post.

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