KYIV -- A court in Kyiv has reinstated Roman Nasirov to the position of head of the State Fiscal Service after he was fired in January following his arrest on suspicion of embezzlement.
Nasirov’s lawyer, Lyubomyr Drozdovskyy, told the Hromadske television channel that the Regional Administrative Court in the Ukrainian capital ruled on December 11 to immediately reinstate Nasirov to the post with financial compensation for the days he was absent from work.
There was no official statement by the court or Ukrainian officials regarding the information, but Kyiv police sources confirmed to RFE/RL that Nasirov was reinstated.
Nasirov is being investigated on suspicion of defrauding the state of 2 billion hryvnyas ($70 million).
He is one of the highest officials who had been expected to face prosecution in Ukraine, whose pro-Western government is under pressure from the United States, the European Union, and donor organizations to tackle endemic corruption.
Nasirov was arrested after the National Anticorruption Bureau accused him of signing off on grace periods for a number of taxpayers, including companies linked to a former lawmaker who fled the country in 2016 while facing a corruption investigation.
Shortly after his arrest in March 2017, he was released on bail but ordered to wear an electronic bracelet and barred from leaving Kyiv without authorities' permission.
Western officials say corruption hurts Ukraine's chances of throwing off the influence of Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backs separatists whose war with Kyiv has killed more than 10,300 people in eastern Ukraine.