Ukraine parliament removes anti corruption official

Mikheil Saakashvili (Photo by Jfimley James Fimley – Own work, Public Domain)

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s parliament has removed the chairman of its anti-corruption committee, a move likely to stoke rising tensions over corruption in the country.

The vote Thursday comes after this week’s attempts to arrest former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who has become a high-profile anti-corruption campaigner in Ukraine. Saakashvili supporters freed him from a police van after he was detained on Tuesday.

The arrest attempt and a police raid on a small supporter tent encampment raised concerns that Ukraine is facing its worst political crisis since the 2014 protests that drove the pro-Russia president out of the country.

The ousted committee head, Yegor Sobolev, said: “The former and present corrupt elite have colluded. Their plan is to break the independence of anti-corruption bodies and replace them with fake ones.”