The former acting head of the State Geocadastre, Oleksandr Kolotilin, called the NABU case against him and former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyi absurd, as the land plots that detectives claim they seized are with their owners and have not been arrested. He stated this in an interview with UNN.
In his opinion, the case of the anti-corruption activists is a political one, because if it was really a seizure of property in the interests of third parties, the suspects "at least should have been interested in it.
"The main marker for me was that this is the first time I've seen this in a land case where the land plots were not seized. That is, the objects of the crime are with their owners, and they have an unlimited right to dispose of these land plots. In other words, NABU is not even going to return these land plots, since it did not seize these land plots in the first place. So then what is the purpose of this case? To change the minister? I mean, what conclusion can be drawn?" Kolotilin said.
He believes that the case of the anti-corruption activists has no prospects, as there are more questions than answers.
"In my opinion, SAPO detectives and prosecutors will hand over the charges, as they cannot backtrack after public statements, and will submit them to the High Anti-Corruption Court, and there it will be legally established that there is no object of the crime, as no one has seized anything . Suspicions were handed over to 12 or 13 people. And we have nothing to do with these lands, nor with the ATO soldiers, nor with third parties. It turns out that we seized the land in the interests of thousands of ATO soldiers. There is no object of the crime. I just don't see any prospects in this case. But it can last for 2-3 years, because there are so many suspects, so many interrogations, investigative actions, and so on," said the former head of the State Geocadastre.
Context
The case in question is a criminal investigation in which detectives suspect former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky of organizing the seizure of NAAS land in Sumy region to transfer it to the ATO military. According to the investigation , these lands were allegedly used by the state-owned enterprises Iskra and Nadiya, and therefore could not be transferred to the ATO soldiers. The Supreme Court and expert examinations ruledthat the NABU's accusations were false, because the land plots in question did not belong to the NAAS, and therefore could be privatized by the ATO military on legal grounds, under the right granted to them by the state.
In view of this, there are concerns about violations of the presumption of innocence by the NABU in the case against Mykola Solskyi. In particular, the anti-corruption activists were criticized by the Kharkiv Human Rights Group. They stated that the real reason for the prosecution of Solskyi is the reform of the land market in Ukraine.