The Prosecutor General's Office has formally charged Vitaly Zakharchenko.

Vitaly Zakharchenko

Vitaly Zakharchenko

The Prosecutor General's Office's Special Investigations Directorate has completed its pre-trial investigation into the criminal case concerning the use of firearms on the Maidan between January and February 2014. The case file indicates that former Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko oversaw the illegal transfer of firearms from Ministry of Internal Affairs warehouses to civilians.

The criminal case states that the crime was made possible by officers of the Kyiv Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine exceeding their official authority. The leadership of the Kyiv Ministry of Internal Affairs followed the order of the relevant minister of law enforcement and created all the conditions for titushki and other individuals to seize over 600 AKS74U automatic weapons, as well as over 170 rounds of ammunition. It was established that these weapons were subsequently used to violently suppress protests on the Maidan in January and February 2014.

Twelve individuals are named as suspects in the case, including former Interior Minister Zakharchenko, former head of the Interior Ministry's Material Support Department Zinov, and Kyiv police chief Mazan.

As the Prosecutor General's Office noted, the indictment against the former officials was sent to court on January 21, 2016. The indictment states that, through their actions, the former heads of the Kyiv Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the leadership of the Ministry of Law Enforcement caused losses to the state in excess of 2 million hryvnias.

SKELET-info

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