One day before the July 21 parliamentary election, Ukraine’s Central Election Commission disqualified a candidate whom detectives identified as a wanted Moldovan criminal with nine Ukrainian passports issued under different names.
According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), 39-year-old Dmytro Torner, No. 44 on the Opposition Platform – For Life party list, turned out to be Moldovan citizen Dmitry Nekrasov, who is wanted at home for escaping from prison.
Starting in 2007, Nekrasov reportedly forged identity documents to illegally get hold of five Ukrainian domestic passports under different names as well as four Ukrainian international passports for travel abroad, the SBU said. At the same time, he has never been a legal Ukrainian citizen, the State Migration Service confirmed.
Opposition Platform – For Life did not comment on the incident.
The pro-Russian party, which polls second for parliament, nominated a number of candidates with tarnished reputations and embroiled in corruption investigations.
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Torner’s candidate page on the Central Election Commission’s website lists him as the head of the analytics department at Khim Trade, an electricity and gas distribution company that belongs to oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Firtash is a friend and business partner of Serhiy Lovochkin, the former chief of staff of disgraced President Viktor Yanukovych and one of the leaders of Opposition Platform – For Life.
Little is known about Torner’s past.
According to an investigation by journalist Oksana Denysova published on the Telegram channel The Newsroom on July 19, Chisinau-born Nekrasov was sentenced to 11 years in prison for embezzlement, fraud, and drug dealing in his home country in 2003. However, a year later, he escaped from prison and fled to Ukraine.
He allegedly obtained his first Ukrainian passport in 2007 under his mother’s maiden name. In the following years, he used his first and second wives’ surnames before becoming Torner in 2019.
