Ukraine police raid cabinet meeting in corruption crackdown

(Vatican Radio) Two senior Ukrainian officials have been detained during a cabinet meeting over alleged financial wrongdoing just hours after a powerful regional governor was sacked. The arrests are part of a wider crackdown on high-level corruption, officials said.

In what appeared a highly choreographed event, the head of Ukraine's State Emergencies Service, Serhiy Bochkovsky, and his deputy Vasyl Stoyetsky were handcuffed by police at a televised government session. 

They are suspected of involvement in high-level corruption.

As the drama unfolded, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said "that when the country is at war and counting every penny - they steal from people and the state." He warned that anyone who breaks the law and in his words "sneers" at Ukraine, will face prosecution   

Earlier Ukraine president dismissed the billionaire governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, Ihor Kolomoisky, amid concerns over the misuse of private armies.

GOVERNOR DISMISSED

Last week the government limited the power of Ukraine's ultra-rich business elite by pushing reforms through parliament that also weakened the governor's control over an oil and gas company.

Kolomoisky reacted by ordering armed men to seize the offices of two energy firms in the capital, Kiev, prompting his dismissal.

President Petro Poroshenko says that his government's ongoing battle against pro-Russian separatists in the east should be accompanied by a crackdown on high-level corruption.

“War is not an excuse for not making reform: fighting against corruption, attracting the most famous international advisers for creation of an anti-corruption bureau, the responsibility now on ministers, prosecutor-general, top officers in the police, for the corruption charges and presented in transparent manner," he told Euronews television.

"This is the only way how we can win the trust of the people in this difficult time."

ANTI-CORRUPTION WISH LIST

Poroshenko makes clear that officials and controversial business people, known as oligarchs, are no longer immune from prosecution. High on his wish list of reforms are "the building up of the independent court system, remove all the immunities from members of parliament, from the judges, because everybody should be equal before the law,” he added.

“The person who is involved in the corruption don’t have any umbrella anymore and they understand sooner or later, better sooner, he will be responsible. Oligarchs are not making decisions about what will be the development of the country."

Poroshenko says the corruption crackdown honours thousands of people who died in both the revolution that ousted the pro-Russian president, and the conflicts that followed, in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

"I am absolutely sure that we live now in a different country, in a free and democratic Ukraine which was created in Maidan [square] during the revolution for dignity."