09:41 11.03.2014

Kharkiv region ex-governor detained for "encroachment on Ukraine's territorial integrity" - prosecutors

2 min read

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has confirmed the detention of the former head of the Kharkiv region administration, Mykhailo Dobkin.

"Dobkin has been detained. Investigators of the Prosecutor General's Office have notified him that he is suspected of committing a crime under Part 2 of Article 10 of the Ukrainian Penal Code (encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine)," a Prosecutor's Office spokesman told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday evening.

Dobkin's lawyer, Yulia Pletniova, said earlier that the ex-governor had been detained.

"At 0520, as soon as Mykhailo Markovych stepped over the threshold of an investigator's office at the Prosecutor General's headquarters, he was detained under a warrant issued by the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv," she told Interfax-Ukraine.

Pletniova said she considered the former governor's detention to be illegal.

"The document says that Mykhailo Markovych was allegedly hiding [from the investigation], which is not true because he and I went to the Prosecutor's Office of the Kharkiv region on March 7 in order to find out whether any criminal cases had been opened against him and to reaffirm his readiness to testify, should such cases exist," the lawyer said.

Dobkin went to the Prosecutor's Office voluntarily, after receiving a phone call from the director of the Ukrainian Security Service's branch for the Kharkiv region, Pletniova said.

On Tuesday, Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky District Court is expected to consider prosecutors' request to remand Dobkin into custody as a measure of restraint, she said.

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