Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency said security services tried to prevent officers from raiding parliament offices on Saturday, as investigators said some MPs were implicated in a new graft probe.<\/p>\n
The anti-corruption detectives were later allowed into the heavily guarded compound where the parliament is located, Ukraine’s State Security Department said on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has been embroiled in a string of corruption scandals that led to the resignation of the chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky, including a $100 million kickback scheme in the battered energy sector, masterminded by an alleged personal friend of the president.<\/p>\n
“NABU and SAPO, following an undercover operation, exposed an organised criminal group that included current members of parliament,” the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) said, referring to the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.<\/p>\n
“Employees of the State Security Department are resisting NABU officers during investigative actions in committees of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine,” it added, referring to Ukraine’s parliament.<\/p>\n
The anti-corruption agency did not reveal details of the investigation, but said suspects took bribes for votes.<\/p>\n
The investigation became public as Zelensky departed for talks in the US about efforts to formulate a plan to end the war, and after Russia sent scores of drones and missiles against the capital Kyiv, killing one and wounding dozens.<\/p>\n
The corruption scandals have triggered widespread public anger at a time when Russia is hammering Ukraine’s power grid, causing blackouts and threatening winter heating outages.<\/p>\n
These challenges come at a critical time for Zelensky, who has remained popular and largely unchallenged since Russia invaded in 2022.<\/p>\n
The US is pushing Zelensky to cede territory and hold elections during war, amid a mounting Russian offensive in the east of the country.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian president had in the summer tried to strip the independence of Ukraine’s two key anti-graft agencies, NABU and SAPO, established after a pro-Western revolution in 2014.<\/p>\n
This had triggered rare wartime anti-government protests and forced him to walk back the decision after criticism from the EU, Kyiv’s key financial and military backer.<\/p>\n
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been plagued by frequent corruption scandals — with graft and rule-of-law major vulnerabilities in Kyiv’s EU bid.<\/p>\n
bur-asy\/gv<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency said security services tried to prevent officers from raiding parliament offices on Saturday, as investigators said some MPs were implicated in a new graft probe. The anti-corruption detectives were later allowed into the heavily guarded compound where the parliament is located, Ukraine’s State Security Department said on Facebook. Ukraine has been embroiled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[95,423,276,277],"class_list":["post-22438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-conflict","tag-corruption","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22441,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438\/revisions\/22441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}