Roman Hrynkevych, the son of Lviv businessman Ihor Hrynkevych, who was detained by the State Bureau of Investigation in Odesa on Monday, was hiding in Kyiv for several days, after which he left for Odesa, hoping to find people who would help him illegally leave for Moldova in a day, the SBI said.
"In early January of this year, a number of searches were conducted in the proceedings on the procurement of clothing for the army. Realizing the consequences, the son of a Lviv businessman has not spent the night at home since then, and three days after the searches, he decided to flee to evade justice," said Tetiana Sapian, a communications adviser to the State Bureau of Investigation, on the air of the National Telethon on Tuesday, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
She noted that, according to the SBI, on January 14-15-16, Hrynkevych Jr. was incognito in Kyiv and its suburbs.
"He used secrecy so that he could not be tracked," Sapian said.
According to her, on January 16, Roman Hrynkevych left the capital for Odesa, where he began to actively look for people who would agree to smuggle him across the border in exchange for money.
"The suspect planned to do all this within a day," the counselor said, explaining that due to the publicity of the case, the number of people willing to join the illegal deal narrowed, so Hrynkevych was forced to stay in Odesa.
"He hired people with the appropriate skills to 'cover his tracks,' but SBI officers managed to detect and detain him as a result of a series of operational measures," Sapian said.
The SBI representative informed that Hrynkevych was going to flee to Moldova.
Earlier it was reported that on January 22, SBI officers detained in Odesa the son of Lviv businessman Ihor Hrynkevych, Roman, who is the fifth suspect in the case of purchasing low-quality military clothing for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
On January 22, the court remanded Roman Hrynkevych in custody until March 17 with an alternative bail of UAH 500 million.
As a reminder, on December 29, 2023, the SBI announced the detention of Hrynkevych on an attempt to bribe him: he offered $500,000 to one of the heads of the SBI's Main Investigation Department to return the property seized as part of the investigation.
The next day after his detention, the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv arrested Hrynkevych in a bribery case. The businessman was sent to custody with the possibility of bail in the amount of UAH 429 million 440 thousand. The court seized his property, and the SBI seized the accounts and assets of his companies.