The High Anti-Corruption Court has been considering cases against high-ranking officials for years, and detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine can investigate them for decades. But all this time, suspects, whose guilt may not be proven in the end, have to live with significant restrictions, UNN writes .
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Foreign experts who audited the NABU's activities in 2021-2023 stated in their report that the detectives' performance is negatively affected by the length of time it takes for court proceedings to be considered by the HACC. Therefore, to optimize the work of the anti-corruption court, the auditors recommend increasing the number of judges.
However, will the increase in the number of judges actually affect the efficiency of NABU investigations? After all, detectives have long been "famous" for high-profile exposés of high-ranking officials, but sometimes it takes them ten years to prove their "exposure.
The criminal proceedings against the former head of Energomerezha, Dmytro Kriuchkov, which detectives have been investigating for almost 10 years, are illustrative. It would be all right, but all this time Kryuchkov has been forced to live with significant restrictions that have already negatively affected his lifestyle and private business.
At the same time, the HACC has also repeatedly complained that the NABU and the SAPO delay the investigation, which results in judges having to consider cases in a very short time.
I understand that there are a lot of cases, they are mostly complex and voluminous. However, there are caseswhere there is very little time left for the court to consider the case within the general statute of limitations for bringing to justice. If we recall the cases of false declaration, it was very difficult to consider them within such a time limit, and in some cases impossible. For example, the statute of limitations for bringing to liability expires in March, and the case is sent to court in early March. That is, the pre-trial investigation took months, and the judicial panel is supposed to consider it in two to three weeks,
And, as practice shows, the duration of an anti-corruption investigation does not affect its quality, as the NABU's "high-profile" cases against high-ranking officials have repeatedly fallen apart in court.
A good example is the criminal proceedings against former Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan. However, both cases collapsed in court. As Volodymyr Omelian himself noted in an interview with UNN , the NABU criminal proceedings caused him significant reputational and financial damage. For many years, he has been mentioned in NABU reports as a minister against whom criminal proceedings have been opened, which has led to problems with banking institutions, among other things.
However, the NABU and the SAPO did not officially apologize to the former minister for the illegal criminal prosecution and damage to his business reputation. This was done only by individual detectives in private conversations.
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One of the recent "high-profile" cases that NABU has been investigating for five years is the case against the former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyi. According to the investigation, Solskyi allegedly seized land plots in Sumy region that allegedly belonged to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences.
However, as it turned out later, neither he, nor his family or affiliates have such land. However, ATO participants, who have been granted the right to privatize them, do. The NABU refused to specify what exactly Solsky had seized . Moreover, the detectives tried to "leak" the examinationthat they themselves had ordered and which, apparently, was supposed to testify to Solsky's innocence. However, the public accusations had their effect - Solsky resigned from his post as minister.