(Bloomberg) -- Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin submitted his resignation following a large-scale investigation into prosecutors obtaining fake disability statuses, which drew criticism from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Kostin submitted his resignation citing “many shameful cases of abuse” discovered in the prosecutor’s office of Ukraine, according to a statement posted on the Prosecutor General’s Telegram channel.
The resignation, which must first be approved by parliament, followed a meeting between Zelenskiy and his top officials on Tuesday, during which they discussed numerous cases of prosecutors obtaining fake disability statuses in order to receive disability benefits.
Zelenskiy said the situation demands a personnel change in ministries as well as “political responsibility” from the country’s prosecutor general, according to a statement on his Telegram channel earlier on Tuesday.
The crackdown on prosecutors is part of a sweeping investigation into the work of medical commissions. Around 2,400 officials are currently undergoing checks by the security services to determine whether they obtained their disability status legally, state security service chief Vasyl Malyuk said.
Malyuk added that the medical commissions issuing fake disability certificates to prosecutors were also involved in schemes to evade military draft, according to his post on Telegram. More than 4,000 fake disability statuses have already been revoked as a result of ongoing investigations in several regions across Ukraine.
(Updates with context in last paragraph.)
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