KIEV // Ukrainian police officers charged into a televised government meeting on Wednesday and detained two top officials on suspicion of extorting bribes.
Police snapped handcuffs onto emergency services chief Serhiy Bochkovsky and his deputy Vasiliy Stoyetsky and calmly marched the pair out of the cabinet meeting.
Interior minister Arsen Avakov said both men were suspected of extorting bribes from fuel suppliers.
“This was not a show, this was not theatre,” Mr Avakov said. “We decided it was necessary to do it this way, during the cabinet meeting, as inoculation, as a preventative measure against corrupt officials, of whom we unfortunately have many.”
Mr Avakov said the offices of the emergency services were being raided as part of investigations.
The arrests came hours after president Petro Poroshenko announced the dismissal of powerful oligarch Igor Kolomoisky from his post as regional governor in the key industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk following a dispute over control of the main state oil and gas company.
The highly public nature of the detentions appeared designed to convey the impression that anti-graft measures are picking up pace.
Ukraine’s economy, already hamstrung by crippling bureaucracy and corruption, has been further burdened by a war in the east with Russian-backed separatists.
The government is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which approved a $17.5 billion (Dh64bn) rescue package for its war-battered economy earlier this month, to tackle oligarchs and stamp out corruption.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
