Investigative journalist Khristo Grozev said that the published Russian passport of Gennady Trukhanov is a fake
The President of Ukraine signed a decision to terminate the citizenship of Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov based on materials from the Security Service of Ukraine. At the same time, investigative journalist Khrysto Grozev expressed doubts about the authenticity of the documents provided by the special services. According to Grozev, the document shows signs of forgery.
The journalist explained that the series and number belong to biometric passports, which are issued exclusively in the personal presence of the owner, with mandatory fingerprinting and photography.
“I am sure that the document is forged, since I have been working with Russian documents for a long time. Biometric passports are issued in series, so it is impossible to use the old form to apply for a passport five or ten years after its issuance, Grozev noted.
The journalist added that, according to his information, the passport number released by the SBU had already been assigned to another person from Novosibirsk, who had been using it for ten years.
“The passport shown to the SBU was allegedly issued in 2015, while similar passports from the same series in Russian databases were issued on November 2, 2010,”, Grozev explained.
He recalled that Trukhanov did have Russian citizenship, obtained in 2002 on the basis of a Soviet passport. He subsequently received new documents in 2003 and 2011, but no evidence of a new passport has been found after 2011. According to Grozev, in 2017 Trukhanov’s lawyers allegedly filed a petition to renounce the passport, but the legal consequences of this move remain unclear.
