OCU "priest" gets suspended sentence for trading positions in police

"Priest" Taras Volianiuk with the "clergy" of the OCU and Petro Poroshenko. Photo: facebook.com/taras.vol

The Rivne City Court gave a suspended sentence with a three-year probation period for the “priest” of the OCU, who, together with his acquaintance, a policeman, traded positions in the police. The corresponding decision of July 7, 2021, was published in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions.

In November 2020, OCU cleric Taras Volianiuk and his accomplice were detained while receiving the first part of a bribe ($ 21.4 thousand) from a man whom they promised a leading position in the Sarny police department. In total, the defendants in the case wanted to receive 100 thousand dollars.

Then the Prosecutor's Office sent indictments to the court against the detainees, who were charged with an unfinished attempt to take possession of other people's property by deception and abuse of trust (fraud), committed on an especially large scale and by prior conspiracy by a group of persons (Part 3 Article 15, Part 4 Art.190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The sanction of the article provides for punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of 5 to 12 years with confiscation of property.

The accused confirmed the circumstances of the crime and entered into a plea agreement with the prosecutor. The parties agreed on the punishment – five years of imprisonment with release from serving the sentence with a three-year probation period. The court upheld this agreement.

In a number of media loyal to the OCU, the event was covered without specifying the denomination, which the spokesperson for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Archpriest Nikolai Danilevich, drew attention to.

“When today the media write about some church negative and delicately keep silent about what denomination it is, it means that it is the OCU or the UGCC. In this case, it goes about an OCU cleric who traded the post of police chief. Because if it were a priest of the UOC, it would have been trumpeted long ago, clearly indicating the denomination,” the priest stated on his TG channel.

The UOJ also reported that a "priest" from the Lviv region was caught for the third time in the arms trade.

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