File Photo: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. (Reuters)
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has fired billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky as governor of a key region in the east after a raid by armed men on the Kiev offices of a state oil firm, his website said today.
The 52-year-old has been at the centre of a political storm since men, armed and masked, briefly entered the offices of UkrTransNafta last Thursday night after its director, an ally of Kolomoisky, was replaced.
As governor of Dnipropetrovsk, Kolomoisky, a banking, energy and media tycoon with a fortune put at $1.8 billion by Forbes last year, has been a valuable ally to the central government by financing volunteer battalions there to defend against pro-Russian separatists.
© Thomson Reuters 2015