Chernihiv Court of Appeals has upheld the decision to detain former Deputy Minister for Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Yuriy Hrymchak, his wife Yulia Hrymchak has said.

"The ruling of the court of appeal on the application of preventive measures: Leave it unsatisfied! Hrymchak was left in custody in the Chernihiv pretrial detention center," she said on Facebook on Friday.

As reported, on the evening of August 14, the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the SBU State Security Service, under the procedural leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), detained Hrymchak and his accomplice for extorting bribes in the amount of $1.1 million. They were detained while a portion of the amount $480,000.

Hrymchak is suspected of committing a crime under Part 4 of Article 190 of Ukraine's Criminal Code (fraud committed on an especially large scale or by an organized group).

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said Hrymchak "and his assistants demanded money for influencing the decisions of the courts and officials of the Ministry of Culture for making custom-made decisions."