Do officials of the territorial centers of recruitment and social support receive court sentences for assistance in evading mobilization? Specially for UNN, lawyer, Honored Lawyer of Ukraine Volodymyr Bogatyr looked into this issue.
First of all, it should be noted that liability for crimes committed by officials of territorial centers of recruitment and social support may be qualified under different articles of the Criminal Code.
“These can be typical white-collar crimes. For example, abuse of power or official position (Article 364 of the Criminal Code), acceptance of an offer, promise or receipt of unlawful benefit (Article 368 of the Criminal Code) or forgery (Article 366 of the Criminal Code).
If you ask for information about crimes under these articles, the Prosecutor General's Office or other government agencies are unlikely to provide only generalized information. Most likely, such reporting on the subject of the crime is simply not kept,” the lawyer explained.
When it comes to obstructing the legitimate activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations (and activities aimed at organizing mobilization evasion schemes, including by TCC and JV officials, are precisely such obstruction), the Criminal Code has a separate Article 114-1, which provides for liability in the form of imprisonment for a term of five to eight years.
And it is under this article that the State Bureau of Investigation is conducting criminal proceedings against TCC employees who assist citizens in evading mobilization.
“A year ago, when scandals were not so widespread, the SBI reported on the investigation of 260 criminal proceedings related to the work of TCCs and SECs. Now there are obviously more,” says Bohatyr.
According to him, according to the statistics published by the Prosecutor General's Office on registered criminal offenses and the results of their pre-trial investigation, 584 obstructions of the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were entered into the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations in the first nine months of 2024. Of these, only 179 proceedings resulted in a person being served with a notice of suspicion. Only 63 cases were sent to court with an indictment and 9 proceedings were closed.
“But it is not known whether these cases were related to the TCC,” the lawyer adds.
If you look at the data from the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, you will notice that there are no court verdicts under this article against TCC officials at all.
“In total, the TCC is mentioned in 36 verdicts of the courts of first instance under Article 114-1 of the Criminal Code, which contains the register. Of these, 32 verdicts were against people who administered or ran groups in messengers or social networks that informed citizens about the places where mobilization activities were actually carried out by TCC and JV employees. Another four sentences were related to facilitating evasion from mobilization by other means (forgery of documents, production of military uniforms and chevrons, fictitious employment),” said lawyer Bogatyr.
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Recently, the media published the ruling of the Pechersk Court of Kyiv in the case of an official of the Pechersk TCC and JV, who was accused of unreasonably excluding 19 reserve officers from military registration. However, the court closed the proceedings due to the expiration of the time limit.