After five years on the run, desperate to avoid arrest on allegations of abuse of authority, ex-former deputy prosecutor Renat Kuzmin, walked into the Verkhovna Rada with a member of parliament’s mandate with the pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life 44-member faction on Aug. 29.
Kuzmin, 52, a Donetsk-born lawyer, was spotted in parliament by a journalist of Bihus.Info investigative project. He ignored the question she asked on where he has been for five years. He was the top deputy under General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka, another official who fled Ukraine along with ex-President Viktor Yanukovych amid the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014.
Kuzmin was accused of misconduct when jailing then-opposition politician and ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko and of illegal seizure of state-owned property, a 1,000 meter square house and a hectare of land in Pushcha-Vodytsya Recreation Complex. Kuzmin flew under the radar in June 2014, soon after the accusations against him were made and the police put his name on a wanted list. He remained among wanted persons on the Interior Ministry of Interior Affairs’ website, according to Bihus.Info, before his name was removed on Sept. 3.
On Aug. 21, Kuzmin appeared on television, giving an interview to 112 Ukraine, NewsOne, and ZIK, the TV channels owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s friend Viktor Medvedchuk. Kuzmin was speaking with the reporters in front of a court in Ukrainian city Cherkasy, where his case was heard. He said that he had been hiding in Ukraine with the help of some intelligence agents.
“For the past five years, I have been in Ukraine. However, many people, including officials and secret services’ representatives, helped me to avoid illegal arrest. Thus, I will not name them or disclose the places where they hid me from the repressions of the (President Petro) Poroshenko regime,” he said to the broadcasters.
However, according to Larysa Sargan, the Ukrainian General Prosecution Office’s spokesperson, Kuzmin was abroad hiding from justice. On Aug. 29, the charges against Kuzmin were dropped, says the document issued by prosecutors and posted on Facebook by GPU’s former employee.
The first days of Kuzmin’s work in the Verkhovna Rada were marked by him condemning the decision of the parliament majority to lift MPs immunity on Sept. 3. He wrote on Facebook: “Opposition Platform-For Life will be under repressions. Nothing new though. We have been observing this for the past five years. Up until now, the MPs were able to resist the regime using their immunity status.”
In April 2013 in an interview with the Kyiv Post, Kuzmin promised to bring justice to many cases, including the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, an endless criminal investigation into whether former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma ordered the Sept. 16, 2000, assassination. The investigation remains open. Four high-ranking police officials, including ex-Gen. Oleksiy Pukach, have been convicted and sentenced to prison for their role in the murder of one of Ukraine’s most prominent journalists and the co-founder of the Ukrainska Pravda website.
