Ukrainian Interior Minister may be jailed?

Prosecutor’s General Office of Ukraine re-qualified the criminal case, brought against Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko, who scuffled with Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy on January 18, from “infliction of light bodily injures” into a “malfeasance in office”.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, Yuri Lutsenko claimed this to journalists on Monday after an interrogation in the PGO.

“They re-qualified the case on Chernovetskiy from infliction of light bodily injures into a malfeasance in office. This is something new. This is ridiculous. It would be [ridiculous] if it was not that clearly coordinated by the highest official, and his subordinate – the Prosecutor General”, Yuri Lutsenko said.

As UNIAN reported earlier, on 18 January, after a session of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko and Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy waged a fight. President’s Chief of Staff Victor Baloha claimed it was “shameful for the two high officials, regardless of who of them provoked the fight. The two officials behaved unworthy of their positions, extremely unreasonably, in a boyish way, and cast aspersions on their own authority and the reputation of state power agencies. It was the first, and, during my tenure on the post of the Presidential Secretariat’s head, the last case, when blows and slaps were exchanged at 11 Bankova Str.[the address of the Presidential Secretariat].” V.Baloha stressed that the President expects the Prosecutor’s General Office to give a profound legal assessment of the fight between the Interior Minister and the Kyiv Mayor.