Anti-corruption failure: SAPO appeals against cancellation of suspicion to Granovsky

Anti-corruption failure: SAPO appeals against cancellation of suspicion to Granovsky

Kyiv  •  UNN

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The HACC canceled the suspicion of former MP Granovsky in the OPP case due to lack of evidence. The SAPO appealed this decision but refused to name the prosecutors in the case, citing the secrecy of the investigation.

Recently, the High Anti-Corruption Court has effectively "ruined" another case of anti-corruption activists and canceled the suspicion against former MP Oleksandr Hranovskyi. The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office rushed to correct the mistakes and appealed the decision, UNN reports .

The NABU publicly announced the suspicion of Oleksandr Hranovskyi back in October 2022. In their press release, the anti-corruption activists immediately stated that "the People's Deputy of Ukraine of the VIII convocation organized a scheme under which the Odesa Port Plant sold mineral fertilizers to a predetermined company at prices below market prices." However, in 2.5 years, detectives did not find enough evidence, and on August 20, the HACC canceled the notice of suspicion to Hranovsky.

On August 23, 2024, the prosecutor filed an appeal against the decision of the investigating judge of August 20, 2024 to cancel the notice of suspicion to the person you indicated in the request,

- the SAPO's response to  UNN's  request  reads.

At the same time, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office refused to name the prosecutors in the Hranovsky case, citing the secrecy of the investigation. However, as is well known, the secret of the pre-trial investigation is the factual data on the circumstances of the commission of illegal actions, on the plans for conducting certain investigative actions, on the investigative actions already conducted, and not the list of prosecutors who supervise the observance of laws in criminal proceedings.

This is not an isolated case of anti-corruption cases falling apart in court. Another clear example is the case of anti-corruption activists against former Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan. He has repeatedly claimed that detectives were one-sided in the case against him due to political bias. Both cases against him collapsed in the courts, but the NABU did not officially apologize to the former minister for illegal criminal prosecution and damage to his business reputation.

It seems that a similar situation will occur with the NABU case against former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky, who was accused of assisting ATO veterans in privatizing land plots in Sumy region eight years ago. According to the detectives, the land was used by the National Agrarian Academy and could not be privatized.

However, the version of the detectives was refuted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the National Academy of Sciences had no rights to these lands, as well as by experts who studied the historical chronology of these lands from the 50s of the last century and also emphasized that these lands could not have been included in the land bank of the National Academy of Sciences.

Probably, for a long time, the NAAS could use the land that it had squatted and considered to be its own. This is evidenced, in particular, by the materials of some criminal proceedings, where NAAS employees were accused of squatting on the land incriminated to Solsky and ATO veterans. The NAAS leased these lands to farmers for growing their crops, although this is expressly prohibited.

So now the main intrigue of the NABU case against former Minister Solsky is whether detectives will be able to prove their assumption that the land was indeed used by the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences. If they can't, which is highly likely, the former minister will be acquitted.