Some thoughts on the big day, February 1, when a wave of searches and dismissals covered Ukraine.
“I watched the video broadcast of the court session held on January 24, at which, the request of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Special Anti-Corruption SAP to choose a preventive measure for former deputy minister V. Lozinskyi was considered. They asked for detention or bail of 50 million hryvnias, but the investigating judge decided to apply to him a preventive measure in the form of house arrest.
Why did the judge decide to mitigate the punishment? Because the investigating judge critically evaluated the investigation materials and noticed a contradiction between a large number of informational attacks and the actual circumstances of the case (sorry for the dry legal wording).
The materials provided by the SAP prosecutor to the investigating judge contain no evidence (!) of extortion and receipt of unlawful benefits by Lozynskyi, as well as factual data regarding the official’s unlawful actions.
The materials do not contain evidence of actual receipt of any funds.
In the course of the trial, it has been established that Lozinskyi has nothing to do with independent business entities that have not even begun to fulfill the agreement on the supply of generators, about which we have heard so much.
There is one more very interesting point: the court indicated that the amount of bail offered by the prosecutor is not commensurate with Mr. Lozynskyi’s property status. And to confirm his position, the prosecutor tried to assure the court that Lozynskyi had a large number of real estate by providing excerpts from the register of property rights, ordered according to the criterion “Surname-First-Name-Patronymic”. But the majority of these excerpts, as it turned out in court, are not for Lozynskyi himself, but for other persons whose initials simply match his, whereas their identification codes do not match. And one of these people is even dead.
I wonder if this is a prosecutorial error, negligence or deliberate misleading of the court.
And the main thing. So many manipulations and violations accompanied with powerful information support suggest that the typical story with NABU is repeating again: a high-profile case, great publicity and insufficient real evidence for the prosecution. As a result, a populist imitation of the fight against corruption instead of its eradication.”
Oleksandr Kochetkov,
Later, it become known that the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau filed 10 applications for the impeachment of Judge Yaroslav Shkodin of the High Anti-Corruption Court, which is considering the case of the ex-Deputy Minister of Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, Vasyl Lozynskyi. The judge’s sister is familiar with another person involved in the case and is friends with his wife.
Ukraine’s way on defeat corruption looks like a big challenge, but our society must follow this rout and be united until the last corrupted person among officials. The war is not an excuse to stop or suspend such actions.
Mr. Lozinskyi case is just an example.
Today, is a bid day, when Ukraine special services along with other anti-corruption entities launched massive investigations, searches and the Cabinet of the Ministries of Ukraine announced a huge list of dismissals.
We do hope all these actions will be not just for noise for the west partners. We wait the day when every corrupted person will be in jail.
The war is the time to defeat not only external, but internal enemy.
Tags: russia ukraine war
