Fugitive ex-people's deputy from Odesa is served with new suspicions

Investigators of the Security Service of Ukraine have gathered additional evidence and served a notice of suspicion of new crimes on a former MP from the Party of Regions, who was already charged with collaboration in June.

This was reported by the Center for Public Investigations, citing the SBU press service.

The man is currently suspected of:

• Encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine;
• Violation of the equality of citizens based on their race, nationality, region, religious beliefs, disability and other grounds;
• Collaboration activities;
• Propaganda of war;
• Justifying, recognizing as legitimate, denying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, glorifying its participants.

The new suspicion is based on his recent actions and calls for war.

"He, as a so-called 'expert', publicly called on pro-Kremlin media to change the borders of Ukraine, denied Russian aggression and broadcast theses about 'asvabadites'. A number of examinations have now been completed. A large body of evidence collected by the SBU has been analyzed. The findings confirm that the defendant's speeches contain evidence of his subversive activities against Ukraine. In particular, we are talking about incitement to national, racial or religious hatred and enmity, humiliation of national honor and dignity, etc. Due to the international wanted list, this person is now barred from entering civilized countries," the SBU said.

In June, law enforcement officers served a notice of suspicion of collaboration to the former leader of the Rodina party, Ihor Markov, who was a member of parliament and a member of the Party of Regions faction in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine during the time of Viktor Yanukovych.

On September 20, 2013, Markov was deprived of his parliamentary mandate.

In October 2013, Igor Markov was detained on suspicion of hooliganism with battery, Article 296(4) of the Criminal Code. Investigators believed that in 2007, he and several associates attacked a picket against the reconstruction of a monument to Catherine II in Odesa, organized by nationalists of the Svoboda party. In the fall of 2009, Markov even left the country for several months with the support of the Party of Regions and the Communist Party. He returned, and in 2010 the case was closed. Three years later, the case was reopened, Markov was detained, arrested, and spent four months in a pre-trial detention center. After his release, he went to Russia. In 2015, at the request of the Ukrainian Bureau of Interpol, he was detained in Italy, but refused to be deported to Ukraine, agreeing with the political nature of the persecution.

In August 2015, representatives of organizations that are members of the Coordinating Committee of Maidan NGOs signed an open letter to the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Prosecutor General Shokin and Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Hrytsak demanding that the Rodina party, headed by Ihor Markov, be banned from operating in Ukraine. Civil society activists also demanded that criminal cases be opened against the party's functionaries and that the financial component of their activities be checked.

On February 24, 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity, the new Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksandr Turchynov, canceled the order to revoke the mandate.

In 2018, the Prosecutor's Office of Odesa Region, together with the Security Service of Ukraine in the region, sent a written notice of suspicion to former MP Ihor Markov of committing a number of crimes against the foundations of national security and public order.