A Ukrainian oligarch is being investigated for ordering an assassination

The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday the investigation of a “famous businessman”, already accused of other crimes, for ordering a crime that was to be committed by a group of paid assassins, reports the EFE agency.

The public prosecutor’s statement is accompanied by a pixelated photo in which the physiognomy of the oligarch Igor Kolomoiski, who played a key role in the rise to power of the current president Volodymyr Zelensky, can still be distinguished.

Kolomoiski has been in pretrial detention since September and is awaiting trial after being indicted in two criminal cases for fraud and money laundering.

In the new case announced on Wednesday, he is accused of paying a group of criminals to kill the director of a law firm who did not cancel a decision of a general meeting of shareholders that was not favorable to him. According to the Ukrainian media, it is about a steel company in which Kolomoiski was a minority shareholder.

According to the publication Ukrainska Pravda, the assassination attempt took place in 2003 in the city of Feodosia in the Crimean peninsula, today occupied by Russia. The assassins aimed at the vital organs of the victim, who nevertheless survived. The perpetrators of the attack were sentenced to between 6 and 12 years in prison, but Kolomoiski has so far escaped involvement in this case.

This businessman, considered until recently the most powerful oligarch in Ukraine, was also involved in a case for the assassination, also on command, of a lawyer in 2005, but the case was closed in the same year, notes EFE, quoted by Agerpres.

Kolomoiski built his economic empire during the chaotic privatization process that Ukraine went through after the disintegration of the USSR and is accused of massively defrauding the Ukrainian state.

He has interests in several sectors, including banking, raw materials and also in the mass media, positions from which he supported Volodymyr Zelenski financially and medially in the electoral campaign for the presidential elections in 2019. Igor Kolomoiski then used the powerful his TV stations to promote the comedian-turned-politician.

Fallen in disgrace in the meantime, Kolomoiski is now seen as a symbol of Ukraine’s attempts to reduce corruption and the power of the oligarchs, in the middle of a war with Russia.

Editor: Liviu Cojan

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