The Prosecutor General’s Office did not identify the businessman, but Ukrainian media reported that he was 61-year-old Ikhor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s richest men and a former supporter of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky has long been associated with Kolomoisky, whose media empire aired his program “Sluha narod” (“Servant of the People”) and supported his presidential campaign.
Since Russia’s repeated invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Zelenskyi has promised to fight corruption, and Kolomoiskyi was arrested in September on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.
As for the latest charge, prosecutors said that “the suspect, acting out of personal vendetta, ordered the death of the director of a law firm” for failing to comply with an order to invalidate the resolutions of a company’s shareholders.
The prosecutor’s office stated that the suspect hired members of a gang that specialized in committing serious and particularly serious crimes, including the use of physical violence against rivals. The gang attacked the law firm director, severely beating him but not killing him “for reasons beyond the control of the gang members”, prosecutors said.
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The Ukrainian police said in a statement that the attack took place in 2003 in Feodosia, on the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
The United States banned Kolomoisky and his family from entering Ukraine in 2021, and the State Department said he was involved in “significant corruption” as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 to 2015.
Kolomoisky is the former owner of Privatbank, Ukraine’s largest private bank, which was nationalized after he was accused of embezzling billions of dollars.
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Tags: Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoisky suspected ordering murder
