State-owned enterprises of the National Agrarian Academy of Sciences are involved in four criminal proceedings at once, in particular over land squatting in Sumy region and illegal sale of crops. This was reported by the Sumy Regional Prosecutor's Office at the request of UNN.
Details
These are state-owned enterprises "Iskra" and "Nadiia". The criminal cases include two on the fact of illegal cultivation in 2022 and unauthorized occupation of state-owned land plots, as well as unauthorized cultivation by unidentified persons.
Another proceeding is being investigated into possible illegal actions of the former head of a state-owned enterprise when concluding a contract for the sale of property rights to unfinished agricultural production with a farm.
It should be added that such agreements are usually concluded by NAAS officials when they transfer state land to commercialists in a hidden lease. One such case is described by UNN.
Law enforcement officers opened another case regarding possible illegal actions during the sale of grain crops by a farm, as well as the independent harvesting of crops by the management of a state-owned enterprise.
The pre-trial investigation in these criminal proceedings is ongoing, and measures are being taken to fully, comprehensively and objectively establish all the circumstances of the criminal offenses,
Interestingly, the NAAS officials themselves tried to convince us that not a single hectare of land was leased. However, information from law enforcement agencies may indicate that this is not the case.
Context
The aforementioned state-owned enterprises "Iskra" and "Nadiya" are also the initiators of the case against former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky. Together with the NABU, they accuse him of helping the ATO soldiers privatize land plots they considered theirs. However, the Supreme Court ruled that these land plots never belonged to these state-owned enterprises. To establish the truth, the NABU and SAPO plan to interrogate 1,500 people, although the reasonable timeframe for the investigation has already been exhausted. The ATO members, in turn, call the NABU's actions outrageous and believe that the privatization procedure was legal, and the state granted them this right for the protection of their territories.
It is worth noting that NABU detectives, who are on the side of the National Academy of Sciences in the Solsky case and against the transfer of land to ATO participants, tried to hide the land management expertise. They ordered this expertise themselves, but decided to abandon it when it was ready. This is very likely to indicate that the expertise could have testified to the innocence of the former minister.