The police declared the suspicion to former Odesa mayor Hennadii Trukhanov.
According to Babelʼs sources, he is suspected of official negligence.
On October 14, it became known that Trukhanov had been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship for holding a Russian passport. After that, the secretary of the Odessa City Council Ihor Koval was appointed acting mayor of Odesa.
What preceded
SBU reported on October 14 that the Ukrainian citizenship of Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov was terminated because it was determined that he is a citizen of the Russian Federation and has a valid Russian passport.
According to SBU, in December 2015 he received a Russian passport.
The special service says that in 2017, Trukhanovʼs representatives filed a complaint with the Russian authorities — a court in the Moscow region revoked the validity of his internal passport.
At the same time, the court noted that a person does not lose Russian citizenship even when he or she cancels or renounces this document, if it was obtained legally.
The day before, on October 13, an electronic petition appeared on the president’s website demanding the termination of Ukrainian citizenship of Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov. It collected the required number of signatures in less than 24 hours. Journalists have long claimed that Trukhanov holds a Russian passport, but he denies this.
Hennadii Trukhanov himself says that he will appeal the decision to deprive him of Ukrainian citizenship in the Supreme Court, and "if that is not enough" — in the European Court of Human Rights.
Russiaʼs The Insider claims that SBU published a fake passport because a document with the same number belongs to a Russian woman Tatyana. The passport number also indicates that it was issued on November 2, 2010, and not December 15, 2015, as stated in the publication.
The secretary of the Odesa City Council Ihor Koval was appointed acting mayor of Odesa.
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