MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has reprimanded Dnipropetrovsk Regional Governor Ihor Kolomoiskyi following the oligarch's offensive remarks against journalists.
According to a statement released on the president's official website Friday evening, a relevant presidential decree reproaches Kolomoiskyi "for violating the rules of professional ethics, an act that defames him as a public servant."
According to Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian from the president's party, Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Kolomoiskyi raided the Kiev office of Ukrainian oil transportation company Ukrtransnafta with several armed men on Friday, in an attempt to forcefully reappoint the firm's dismissed manager, Aleksandr Lazorko.
The oligarch left the office building in the evening. Faced with a Radio Svoboda journalist who asked what the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor was doing there so late at night, Kolomoiskyi responded with insulting comments.
Ihor Kolomoiskyi is one of the richest oligarchs in Ukraine. He has reportedly accumulated an estimated wealth of around $6 billion using questionable tactics in the fields of finance, oil, mass media and metal industries, such as hostile takeovers of his competitors.
He was appointed Dnipropetrovsk Regional Governor after last year's coup in Ukraine by then-acting president Oleksandr Turchynov, who is currently the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council's secretary.
Kolomoiskyi reportedly funds a number of Ukrainian volunteer battalions that have committed human rights violations in the southeast of the country, where they have been fighting against independence supporters alongside Kiev forces.
On March 13, the leaders of the eastern Ukrainian self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) asked the leaders of France and Germany to deny travel for senior Kiev officials, including Kolomoiskyi, to the European Union, over their mass violations of human rights.
