Court of Appeals not to lift seizure of Yanukovych’s property in Drabynko’s case
The Court of Appeals of Kyiv has refused to lift the arrest on the real estate of Ukrainian ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in the case of Metropolitan Oleksandr Drabynko’s arbitrary detention. The decision was approved on March 26, it was published in the Unified State Register of Judgments on May 30. The document does not specify the names, but Ukrayinski Novyny claims it refers to Metropolitan Drabynko and Yanukovych, according to Gordon media.
The court upheld the decision of Pechersk Court of Kyiv to levy an arrest on a land plot of a total area of 1.7688 hectares in the village of Novi Petrivtsi, Kyiv region, an apartment, a parking lot in an underground parking with a total area of 20 m², a parking lot with a total area of 19.9 m², and a residential building in the Vyshhorod housing estate in Kyiv.
The decision can not be appealed.
Yanukovych, former Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko and former head of the Kyiv police Valery Koryak are suspected of unlawfully depriving of liberty Metropolitan Drabynko in June-December 2013. At that time, the hierarch was an assistant to the late Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate, His Beatitude Volodymyr. According to the investigation, Yanukovych was exerting pressure on Volodymyr, forcing the latter to leave so he could appoint a more loyal leader of the UOC-MP.
MP of the Opposition Bloc Vadym Novynsky also appears in the case of Drabynko’s arbitrary detention. In December 2016, Verkhovna Rada allowed Novynsky to be prosecuted – the submission of the Prosecutor General's Office states that the MP was suspected of abusing his authority. Novynsky regards the case as “politically motivated”.
In August 2018, the court upheld again Yanukovych’s detention in the case of Metropolitan Oleksandr Drabynko.
