The Kyivskyi District Court of Odesa has found Serhiy Kalinin, a former prosecutor of the Odesa Local Prosecutor’s Office No. 1, guilty of fraud, abuse of influence, and instigating bribery. The perpetrator, who fled to the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region in 2016, was sentenced in absentia to 8 years in prison with the confiscation of all personal property, according to the official court ruling.
The investigation established that shortly before his dismissal from the prosecutor’s office in 2016, Kalinin launched an active corrupt scheme. Utilizing his official status, the former prosecutor extorted large sums of money from citizens under various pretexts.
In December 2015, he convinced an acquaintance to invest $12,000 into a non-existent furniture manufacturing facility in Mykolaiv. Although the victim was promised monthly dividends, he received no payouts. Shortly after, the prosecutor began avoiding meetings and making excuses over the phone.
Another episode involved a promise to lift a seizure on commercial cargo confiscated by the SBU at the airport. Even after being dismissed from his post, Kalinin continued to mislead the victim. He claimed to be close friends with the then-First Deputy Prosecutor of the Odesa Region, Oleh Zhuchenko, asserting that Zhuchenko could resolve the issue. Kalinin demanded $20,000 for top officials at the regional and General Prosecutor’s offices. After receiving a $10,000 advance, the convict fabricated stories about high-level meetings and fake business trips to Kyiv.
Additionally, Kalinin profited from fraudulent employment schemes. According to case files, he promised a man to secure a job for his grandson at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), claiming he had already transitioned to working there himself. The former prosecutor took a $2,000 bribe for the favor, but the young man was never hired.
The indictment against the former law enforcement officer was prepared back in July 2016. However, because Kalinin went into hiding, the authorities could not serve it in person and placed him on the wanted list. Law enforcement intelligence later revealed that he had illegally crossed into the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region.
Case Context: In 2023, Interpol issued a Red Notice for the fugitive. Since standard search operations failed to locate him, the court authorized a special pre-trial investigation in 2024, paving the way for a trial in absentia.
Thanks to the in absentia justice procedure, the Odesa court was able to conclude the trial and deliver the final verdict. Serhiy Kalinin’s prison term will commence the moment he is officially detained.