Roman Nasirov, the former head of Ukraine’s State Fiscal Service, who is currently undergoing trial in a corruption case, has announced he will run for president in 2019.
“I’ll do all I can to become president,” Nasirov said during an interview with Ukraine’s 112 TV news channel late on July 29.
“Every day I think about this more and more,” he said. “I’ve already started preparing for it. Friends and consultants are encouraging me to do this.”
Nasirov, who also chairs Ukraine’s Judo Federation, added that he would get on well with Russian President Vladimir Putin because the Russian leader “also loves judo.”
Nasirov is on trial on suspicion of giving illegal orders to amortize tax debt payments for three private gas-producing companies – Firma Khas, KarpatNadraInvest, and Nadra Geocentr – in 2015-2016.
According to Ukraine’s Special Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office, Nasirov was acting in the interests of Oleksandr Onyshenko, a lawmaker and businessman who fled the country in July 2016 after being accused of embezzlement.
The scheme allegedly run by Nasirov and Onyshenko cost the state nearly Hr 2 billion ($74.9 million) in losses, prosecutors claim.
In early March 2017, Nasirov was detained and notified of the charges. Solomyanskiy Court in Kyiv ordered his detention for 60 days on March 8, 2017, but eight days later he was released on bail of Hr 100 million ($3.7 million). Since then he has worn an electronic tag, the former top official said in his July 29 TV interview.
Nasirov says all of the charges against him are false and has demanded that he be reinstated to his post at the fiscal service.
Shortly after Nasirov’s arrest in March 2017, Ukrainian lawmaker and anti-graft activist Mustafa Nayyem published an official letter from the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, which officially confirmed Nasirov holds British citizenship. Dual citizenship is not permitted in Ukraine, in most cases.
Nonetheless, in his July 29 interview, the former official repeatedly denied possessing any foreign passports.
“Ukrainian citizenship is all (I have),” Nasirov said. “They said I had UK, Hungarian, and Israeli citizenship. Unfortunately, I don’t have them – I wish I had.”
