Former Deputy Head of the Migration Service Sentenced to Nine Years in Prison

The High Anti-Corruption Court found Dina Pimakhova, the former first deputy head of the State Migration Service, guilty in a case involving bribes for processing documents for foreigners. She was sentenced to nine years in prison, with all her property to be confiscated.

 

In addition to imprisonment, the court imposed an additional penalty on Pimakhova—a three-year ban on holding certain positions.

According to the case file, in June 2017, during a meeting with an acquaintance, the official requested $1,800 to process documents that would allow a Vietnamese citizen to legally reside in Ukraine.

After receiving the money, Pimakhova asked for another $30,000 to expedite the granting of Ukrainian citizenship to an Iranian citizen, allegedly based on territorial origin.

According to the prosecution, to achieve this, she proposed falsifying the results of DNA tests to create artificial grounds for establishing family ties between the foreign national and Ukrainian citizens.

Such documents could have served as the basis for a corresponding court ruling, after which the foreign national would have been able to obtain Ukrainian citizenship and passports.

However, the illegal document processing could not be completed due to a leak of information regarding the National Anti-Corruption Bureau’s (NABU) operational activities.

In November 2017, the Pimakhova case gained widespread attention following reports that a NABU special operation had been thwarted. At that time, the State Migration Service claimed that an agent of the Anti-Corruption Bureau had allegedly attempted to provoke the official into accepting a bribe.

Back in September of that year, Pimakhova filed a complaint with the Security Service of Ukraine alleging a possible bribery sting by NABU agents and detectives.

The criminal case based on her complaint was closed multiple times due to lack of evidence of a crime. The final decision to close the case was issued in April 2021, and its legality was subsequently confirmed by the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court.

Source: Transparency International Ukraine

As a reminder, NABU conducted searches at Pimakhova’s residence in connection with the bribery entrapment case.

On November 29, 2017, a NABU detective was detained for attempting to solicit a bribe from Dina Pimakhova, deputy head of the State Migration Service. NABU accused the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine of sabotaging a covert operation aimed at uncovering corruption within the State Migration Service. Pimakhova herself confirmed that she had filed a complaint against him.