The case of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau against ex-Minister Mykola Solsky may fall apart before the trial. The main line of the detectives' accusation is refuted by ATO participants who received land allegedly from the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences and whom UNN spoke to .
Details
The defenders of the country say that no one forced them to give their land to specific agricultural companies - they made all decisions voluntarily. Moreover, they are convinced that they received the land legally, and the NABU's plans to seize their land are shocking to the ATO soldiers, most of whom are now at the front.
This is the first time I've heard about all this. What kind of investigation is this? Who and what can want to take away from me if I am the owner and got everything legally? This is my land, everything is officially registered
The state granted them the right to privatize, and they exercised this right, the ATO soldiers say. Now their land has been leased, and the tenants are paying their money.
I submitted all the documents and received a land plot as a combatant. I have all the documents. I leased the land of my own free will. I receive the rent regularly and on time. Even the indexation is going on - this year the rent has been raised a lot
ATO participant Andriy Titov recalls that he joined forces with his fellow soldiers to apply for land.
It was about 2018-19, 10 of us united in a group. We went to Sumy and there we were issued documents for the land
"Yes, I received a share. I have not heard anything about the investigation. I haven't heard what two state-owned enterprises (Iskra and Nadiia - ed.) are claiming. I didn't sell anything - I still have the share. I did everything legally," says Roman Shevchenko.
We heard several dozen such answers. There will definitely be more of them, because not all servicemen were able to talk to us because they were on combat missions. And many of the ATO participants whom NABU is now trying to make criminals out of have already died.
Context
We are talking about the land plots that more than a thousand ATO participants received in 2017-18 as free privatization. According to the NABU, the ATO participants received land that allegedly belonged to the National Agrarian Academy (NAAS), and Solsky, as a lawyer, helped them to formalize it. However, this version resonates with the decisions of the courts, including the Supreme Court, which ruled that the NAAS had nothing to do with these lands, at least not legally. They considered them theirs as heirs of Soviet collective farms, but they have no official document of ownership.
And while the ATO participants are at the front, NABU is issuing statements about its intention to seize their land, which, of course, causes outrage among the public and the defenders themselves.
Those (lands - ed.) that were transferred to the ownership of ATO participants and other persons - we actually had a pre-trial investigation going on, and we decided that it would be more appropriate to do so when we have more complete evidence. In March of this year, we received a number of expert examinations, which were actually attached to the petition materials, which, in our opinion, substantiate the suspicion, and we will soon decide on further measures
It is worth noting that the aforementioned land plots are claimed by state-owned enterprises of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine "Iskra" and "Nadiya". Since independence, these SOEs have been reorganized and changed their names several times, and during all this time, the Acts of Permanent Land Use have not been issued.
"During the consideration of the case, the courts of previous instances found that there were no state acts for the right to permanent use of land plots both for SE Iskra, SE Nadiia and the companies whose legal successors they are.
In addition, the courts found that the decisions on granting the disputed land plots for permanent use to SE Iskra and SE Nadiya were not made in accordance with the procedure established by the Land Code of Ukraine at the time of filing a lawsuit," the decision of the panel of judges of the Commercial Court of Cassation of the Supreme Court of 5 August 2019 reads.