Ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich has been put on the international wanted list on Ukrainian charges of embezzlement and financial wrong-doing.
Ukrainian authorities said Interpol’s publication of a so-called red notice against the 64-year-old Yanukovich, who has been living in Russia since last year, empowered any police force to hand him over to Ukraine if he was detained.
“Today, several months after Ukraine sent a request to Interpol in March 2014 with the arguments and explanations prepared by the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine, an Interpol special commission has come to a decision,” Interior Minister Arsen Avakov stated.
Yanukovich fled across the border into Russia in February last year after months of protests in Kiev against his decision to back away from a deal that would take Ukraine towards integration with Europe and tighten economic ties with Russia.
The pro-western authorities who took over have accused him and a coterie of relatives and close allies known as The Family, of accumulating huge wealth by robbing state coffers and national assets through corrupt deals.
Yanukovich has denied that he or members of his family were involved in corruption schemes.
After he fled, Russia said Yanukovich had been the victim of a “fascist” coup and went on to annex Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, but it has denied supporting separatists in Ukraine’s industrialised east in a conflict in which more than 4,700 people have been killed.
