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Ukraine’s Rada endorses Yuri Lutsenko as new Prosecutor General

A total of 264 members of parliament voted for the appointment

Yuri Lutsenko ITAR-TASS/Maxim Nikitin

Yuri Lutsenko

© ITAR-TASS/Maxim Nikitin

KIEV, May 12. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada national parliament on Thursday endorsed the appointment of Yuri Lutsenko, who has chaired the Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary caucus, to the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

A total of 264 members of parliament voted for the appointment. The minimal number of votes necessary for endorsement of a decision in the Rada is 226.

Earlier on Thursday, the Rada passed a bill opening the road to the Prosecutor General’s post for people without higher education in law and President Petro Poroshenko signed it into law. The motion was initiated by the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front parties specially to suit Lutsenko’s candidacy.

Right after the voting parliament speaker Andrei Parubiy handed the text of the bill to the President who signed it right in the parliamentary house.

Yuri Lutsenko, 51, is a graduate of the department of electronic technologies at the Lvov Polytechnic Institute. He began his political activity at the Rovno regional council in 1994 and was one of the field commanders on the Maidan in Kiev during the ‘orange revolution’ of 2004.

After that he received the post of the Interior Minister, thus becoming the first-ever civilian Interior Minister.

Lutsenko acted as an advisor to President Viktor Yushchenko and was elected to the Verkhovna Rada on the Our Ukraine/People’s Self-Defence bloc ticket.

Following President Viktor Yanukovich’s arrival at power, Lutsenko was sentenced to a jail term of four years on charges of abuse of occupational powers and the squandering of state finances while in the Interior Minister’s office.

In 2014, he was again elected a Rada deputy in an early parliamentary election, this time on the Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s party ticket, and he became the leader of the party caucus.

The President relieved Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin of duties as of April 3, 2016. The duties of Acting Prosecutor General were delegated provisionally to Yuri Sevruk.

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