Court extends treason suspect Medvedchuk’s detention period

The judge granted the request of the Office of the Prosecutor General and extended the term of detention without setting any bail within the period of pre-trial investigation for Medvedchuk, who it said was reasonably suspected of committing criminal offenses under several articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

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An indictment was sent to the court against Viktor Medvedchuk on June 2 on treason and the attempted plundering of items of national value in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea. The “first episode” of the Medvedchuk case involves charges of:

• illegally transferring data regarding a secret division of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the Russian intelligence services;
  

• development of an anti-Ukrainian project called Promin;

• assisting the Russian Federation in the illegal extraction of oil and gas in the Kerch region.

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Another case in which Medvedchuk appears as a suspect concerns coal supplies from the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas in 2014-2015. On May 23, Ukraine’s SBU security service released a video in which Medvedchuk testified against the fifth president, Petro Poroshenko, who is also a defendant in the “coal case.”

Treason suspect Viktor Medvedchuk escaped house arrest shortly after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was revealed on Feb. 27. Medvedchuk's wife, Oksana Marchenko, recorded a video from Moscow on the eve of the invasion.

SBU officers detained the politician on April 12, when, according to law enforcement officers, he tried to leave the country dressed in a military uniform. The head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, said that the politician received help from the Russian security service, the FSB.

Read also: Ukraine’s SBI says ex-president Poroshenko, pro-Russian politician Medvedchuk may be cross-examined

On April 16, the Lychakovsky District Court of Lviv changed the preventive measure for Medvedchuk and sent him into custody without the possibility of bail.

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine