Ukraine former finance minister arrested in Spain

Spanish authorities arrested on March 3 Yuriy Kolobov, Ukraine’s finance minister under former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, reported the europapress.es news site. He was arrested under an international missing persons alert submitted by the Ukrainian government with INTERPOL in the autumn, suspected in the crime of stealing large sums of state funds. “Currently, a pre-trial investigation body is urgently preparing documents for his transfer according to the requirements of the European Convention on Transferring Lawbreakers of 1957,” said Procurator General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin.

Zenon Zawada: This is the third high-profile arrest of Yanukovych administration officials made by law enforcement authorities since Shokin became the nation’s top prosecutor in early February. Indeed that is far greater progress than was made under his two predecessors in 2014, though it can be argued that they laid the groundwork for these arrests. Shokin has brought the first hope since the EuroMaidan that the evildoers of the Yanukovych administration will be punished.

Yet the ultimate test is whether anyone will be convicted and imprisoned. Mykhaylo Chechetov, the former deputy head of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction, preferred suicide over a court trial, which would indicate that there’s a serious prospect a top official will be imprisoned, which would be a precedent in modern Ukrainian history.