Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin announced that his office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) had launched official investigations into the assets of Kostin's Deputy Prosecutor General, Dmytro Verbytskyi.
Kostin said that his office initiated an internal probe into Verbytskyi following several RFE/RL articles suggesting that Verbytskyi and his girlfriend own a luxury car and expensive homes in affluent areas of Kyiv, which appeared to be beyond their expected salaries as public officials.
The Prosecutor General also said that NABU had launched its own investigation into Verbytskyi's assets.
On June 19, Kostin failed to show up in the Verkhovna Rada, where he had been summoned by lawmakers over the RFE/RL articles on his Deputy.
Kostin reportedly drafted a letter to House Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk asking to postpone parliamentary discussion on the issue until the results of the probe had been delivered.
"I had a conversation with Mr. Verbytskyi," Kostin reportedly said in the letter. "He gave me his arguments and explanations about the situation. He is conducting several high-profile proceedings, the participants of which are very interested in his suspension or dismissal."
The RFE/RL report alleges that Verbytskyi lives in a two-story townhouse in the elite area of Konyk in Kyiv, which his nephew purchased under power of attorney for a businessman registered in Odesa for six times lower than the market value.
An earlier RFE/RL article suggests that Verbytskiy's girlfriend, Khrystyna Ilnytska, received a new Porsche car and a three-story townhouse in the same Konyk neighborhood estimated to be worth at least 52 million hryvnias ($1,270,000).
Ilnytska's official income declarations over the last decade amounted to a little more than 360,000 hryvnias ($8,800).
Elsa Court
(Updated: )
