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Saakashvili calls to imprison tycoons to set things right in Ukraine

The official has suggested imprisoning the interior minister, a former lawmaker of one of the most well-known business tycoons in Ukraine "to show just one example"

KIEV, March 23 /TASS/. Mikhail Saakashvili, the governor of Ukraine’s Odessa region, suggests throwing two dozens of VIPs, including a number of Ukrainian oligarchs, to jail to set things in order in Ukraine.

"About twenty vitally important persons should be imprisoned in Ukraine, and everything will stop," Saakashvili said.

Topping the list are Sergei Kivalov, the former deputy of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada from the Party of Regions; billionaire Igor Kolomoisky; Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and certainly Rinat Akhmetov whom Saakashvili has described as the wealthiest Ukrainian and a symbol of Ukrainian corruption.

"It is obvious that Avakov should go to prison. Not for the glass but for the video [posted in the Internet], which shows how everything is settled in his office; for the illegal casino which it has been impossible to close for two years and where his son loses sums, which a rank-and-file Ukrainian would not earn in a lifetime. It’s elementary," the Odessa governor stressed.

At the same time, Saakashvili is not an advocate of mass arrests and reprisals. "It is a matter of principle. I want to show just one example on one person so that others have no desire to do the same. It is impossible to confiscate everything but it is possible to create conditions, which will force them to spend money on infrastructure development. Let them build hotels on the coast, for example. Let these old jobsters invest in the country. That will bring comfort to them and benefit to the economy," Saakashvili said in an interview with "Novaya Gazeta".