Relatives of Kyiv officials used orphans to flee abroad – Lubinets
4 July 2024 08:19
Kyiv officials could have sent their close relatives abroad under the guise of accompanying orphans and children deprived of parental care. This is reported by "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to the Human Rights Council Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets on Telegram.
According to him, in March 2022, 68 orphans and children deprived of parental care were evacuated from the Centre for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 in Kyiv, accompanied by 20 people, to the former youth camp in Wuppertal, Germany.
Lubinets said that representatives of his office visited the camp this year, but were not allowed in. The reason was the absence of Ukrainian accompanying persons on the territory, and only Germans were in charge of the children.
At the same time, as it turned out later, 55 children had arrived there since the beginning of the evacuation, not 68. The monitoring group was unable to find out where 13 children disappeared.
After that, representatives of the Ombudsman’s Office came to the Kyiv City Service for Children and Families and the Centre for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1. They wanted to find out about the circumstances of the evacuation and talk to the management. As it turned out later, the management did not know about the conditions of the children’s stay in Germany.
Lubinets said that among the escorts were people who were not involved in this area. They had only become employees of the institutions the day before the children were evacuated, and some had never been employed.
“Among these people is a close relative of the head of the Kyiv City Service for Children and Families and a close relative of the head of the Centre for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 in Kyiv. There are also four other accompanying persons whose grounds for departure require further investigation,”
– said the Ombudsman.
He noted that “each of these men resigned” after leaving Ukraine. They did not return to their homeland.
The Ombudsman stressed that the head of the Kyiv City Service for Children and Families and the Kyiv City Centre for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children No. 1 “continued to visit relatives in Wuppertal under the guise of business trips”. One of them did not write reports on the results of the business trips, and the other one wrote them under a copy.
According to Lubinets, he has already sent relevant letters to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the National Police, the National Social Service, the Ministry of Social Policy and the Kyiv City State Administration and is awaiting an investigation.
As a reminder, Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving Ukraine due to martial law.
