Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi has submitted his resignation letter after being suspected of the misappropriation of state land worth millions of dollars.
Parliamentary Speaker, Ruslan Stefanchuk published the handwritten resignation on Facebook on Thursday. Parliament will soon decide on his exit, Stefanchuk wrote.
While investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau told Solskyi he is under suspicion earlier on Tuesday.
The minister is alleged to have brought a total of 1,250 plots of land totalling almost 2,500 hectares into the possession of his agricultural holding between 2017 and 2021. Authorities thwarted an attempt to appropriate a further 3,200 hectares.
The minister denied the allegations.
“There was no corruption. Nobody took money,” he wrote in a statement broadcast by public television.
Solskyi had previously admitted that, during his time as a lawyer in 2017, he had represented several private individuals in a dispute over land against state-owned companies in the Sumy region.
Amid the war with Russia and fears Moscow may be getting the upper hand, there has been speculation in the Ukrainian media for days about the dismissal of several ministers, including Solskyi.
Ukraine has been tackling a major corruption problem in a bid to show the West it is serious about reforms and one day joining NATO and the European Union.
