ODESSA, June 1. /TASS/. Georgian ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s appointment Ukraine’s Odessa region governor is another mistake of the Kiev authorities, Nikolai Skorik, once the region’s governor and now a member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament), said on Monday.
"This appointment made Odessa residents laugh. I wonder if among 40 million Ukrainians there is not a single one who deserves to be appointed to this post and the president had to appoint a man who is facing a number of criminal cases for state money embezzlement in his homeland. I doubt that Saakashvili will be able to unite Odessa residents," he said.
"I have one more question: how did the former Georgian president manage to obtain Ukrainian citizenship? Under the laws of our country, a person seeking Ukrainian passport must waive citizenship of another state," said Storik, who was Odessa region government from November 2013 to February 2014.
Saakashvili was Georgia’s President from January 2004 to November 2013. He left his country in mid-November 2013, days before the expiration of his presidential term and the inauguration of President Georgy Margvelashvili on November 17, 2013. After his departure from Georgia, Saakashvili stayed in the United States and Ukraine. In recent months, he has been in Kiev working in the rank of the International Reform Council chief. On May 30, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili governor of the Odessa region and granted Ukrainian citizenship.
Georgian prosecutors brought several charges against Saakashvili in 2014. Thus, he is charged with the crack down on peaceful demonstrators on November 7, 2007; illegal intrusion into the building of the Imedi television channel; illegal acquisition of property belonging to businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili; the organization of an armed attack on deputy Valery Gelashvili in 2005; the cover-up of a crime and falsification of investigation into the 2006 murder of banker Sandro Girgvliani; the misappropriation of state funds in 2009-2012. Saakashvili was put on a police wanted list in Georgia. Later, Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office asked Interpol to issue an international warrant for his arrest.