MOSCOW, April 6 (RAPSI) – Ukraine has asked Russia to extradite Oleksandr Shepelev, former member of Parliament who is suspected of embezzling public funds and involvement in contract killing, RIA Novosti reported on Monday, citing Ukrainian Prosecutor General`s Office.

“On April 3 of this year, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, acting under the 1957 European Convention on Extradition and the 1993 Convention on Legal Aid and Legal Relations in Civil, Family and Criminal Cases, submitted a request to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to extradite former Ukrainian Parliament member Oleksandr Shepelev,” the statement says.

Shepelev has been put on the international wanted list on suspicion of having embezzled public funds and attempted murder. He was arrested in Hungary, but Hungarian authorities refused to grant him political asylum and then extradited him to Ukraine.

Shepelev escaped from the Kiev City Clinical Hospital, where he had been taken as an emergency patient and guarded by pretrial authorities.

Shepelev was detained on March 19 on a warrant issued by the Odintsovo District Court of the Moscow Region. The court said it would consider the extradition request.

Oleksandr Shepelev was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 2007 from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. In 2010 he left the bloc and joined the Party of Regions. In 2012, he ran for parliament in a single-candidate election district in the Vinnytsia Region but lost to Mykola Katerynchuk (Batkivshchyna).