Mayor of Kyiv and Head of Kyiv City State Administration Vitali Klitschko said that he regards the searches at Kyiv's municipal enterprises as political pressure and political corruption.

"We are always ready to cooperate with law enforcement agencies, we always cooperate absolutely transparently and provide all the documentation. But can this be called cooperation? It looks like manipulation. This is not cooperation. I regard this as political pressure," Klitschko said at Democracy in Action: Zero Corruption Conference on Tuesday.

He stressed that "solving one's own political tasks under the slogan of fighting corruption is political corruption."

"What is political corruption? When long meetings are held in the highest offices of power, where they discuss how to attack a particular mayor, this is political corruption. When the head of the State Fiscal Service, which is to be disbanded, is promised the post of head of the Bureau of Economic Security in exchange for massive searches at local government, it is political corruption. When, against the law, against the will of the people of Kyiv, against the Constitution, they try to appoint another head of Kyiv City State Administration, this is also corruption, a violation of the law," Klitschko said.

He explained that since 2015, the Department of Internal Financial Control and Audit has made 385 audits.

"All the materials that we collected were transferred to law enforcement agencies. Officials who were suspected of corruption were dismissed. For years, these documents were in law enforcement officers, and nothing happened, and suddenly they recalled about them now, and came to municipal enterprises [which is outrageous], on the same cases that we exposed and handed over to law enforcement officers. We are accused of the same cases that we presented," the mayor said.

He also said that thanks to the ProZorro system, Kyiv saved more than UAH 9 billion.

"One of the key protectors of corruption is transparency. Kyiv was the first in Ukraine to introduce the ProZorro system. Some 1,800 structural subdivisions of Kyiv's government carry out purchases exclusively through the ProZorro system, and in several years we have saved more than UAH 9 billion for the budget of our community, and UAH 4.5 billion – only last year," Klitschko said.