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by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj Ukrainian Weekly Toronto Press Bureau TORONTO � A recently arrived Ukrainian consular official has become embroiled with the police and the courts, and since the first week of December has drawn the local media's notice. Olexander Yushko, 32, who was to assume a post as Ukraine's vice-consul in Toronto, was charged on October 26 with two counts of drinking and driving, one count of possession of stolen goods, and one count of attempted bribery of a police officer. According to a staffer of the Clerk's Office of the Ontario Provincial Court, charges of attempting to administer a noxious substance and attempted abduction are pending. [...] [...] [T]he charges against the vice-consul stem from an incident that took place a few days after Mr. Yushko's arrival in Canada. The vice-consul was arrested by Metropolitan Toronto Police Constable Charlie Kozdas after a woman called authorities complaining that a man had attempted to lure her daughters, age 12 and 14, into his car. [...] Constable Kozdas apprehended Mr. Yushko and requested that he submit to a breathalyzer test. Ms. Welch alleged that the vice-consul failed spectacularly, registering three times the legal limit of alcohol intoxication. [...] Mr. Yushko was carrying a handkerchief soaked in anesthetic solvent at the time of his arrest. [...] [...] Mr. Yushko has failed to appear at a total of six hearings since being released on $10,000 bail on October 27 (the latest being on December 5) and has refused to hand in his passport despite an explicit court order to that effect. As a result, a discretionary bench warrant for Mr. Yushko's arrest has been issued, but not yet exercised. [...] The prosecutor is quoted proffering allegations that Mr. Yushko "opened his car door and with the engine still running, tried to entice a 12- and 14-year-old girl into his car," while allegedly holding a handkerchief later analyzed at Toronto's Center for Forensic Sciences and found to contain "a solvent which can act as an anesthetic and in sufficient quantities can induce coma and even death." [...] "It is alleged," the Sun reporter quotes the Crown Attorney as saying, "that at the time of his arrest, the accused attempted to bribe the police officer, stating, in part 'Can't we do something about this? I can get $200 U.S. follow me to my hotel, I will give you the money.' " [...] Copyright � The Ukrainian Weekly, December 15, 1996, No. 50, Vol. LXIV www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1996/509604.html |
| At the end of 1995, I subjected Kuchma's staff-appointing policies to an almost contemptuous criticism, and said that the President, in making his appointments, is governed not by the decency, and not by the professionalism or patriotism of the candidates, but rather by signs that they originated from the same locale as himself, by nepotism and toadyism, by their loyalty, by their parasitism, and especially by evidence that these individuals have been compromised, and that the compromising evidence against them gives indications of criminality. The President, by appointing such individuals to high office, controls them by means of a large, rusty hook around one of their ribs, and for that reason they will do everything that the top man says.... |