Reuters. Ukraine detained one of its four deputy energy ministers and three other suspects as they were caught “red-handed” receiving a tranche of a $500,000 bribe, state prosecutors and anti-graft police said on Monday.

 

Ukraine has stepped up a wartime campaign against official corruption to prove the country’s credentials for joining the European Union, which has made fighting graft a priority.

 

Its energy sector is a vital cog in the national war effort against Russia and it has sustained heavy damage from Russian airstrikes this year. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

 

The Prosecutor General’s Office said the suspects demanded a $500,000 bribe in return for facilitating the removal of a state-owned coal enterprise’s mining equipment from the war-torn areas of the embattled Donetsk region.

 

As part of the arrangement, the Lviv-Volyn basin coal enterprise was to be authorised to move the equipment and operate it freely at state-owned mines in the western region of Ukraine, it said. 

 

The statement did not identify the deputy minister, but the government said it had sacked deputy energy minister Oleksandr Kheilo with immediate effect. The official could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

The other suspects included an official at a state-owned coal enterprise and two other intermediaries, it said on Telegram.