Expert examination in the case of ex-Minister Solskyi has disappointing results for NABU and emphasizes possible forgery of materials

The NABU case against ex-Minister Mykola Solskyi has completed its scientific and legal expertise. Its results are disappointing for detectives. The examination showed that Solsky and other NABU suspects could not take possession of the land of the National Agrarian Academy, as this land did not belong to the NAAS, UNN reports citing the document.

According to the anti-corruption activists, eight years ago Solsky (as a lawyer) organized a scheme whereby NAAS land was transferred for privatization to ATO soldiers. The defense and the ATO soldiers themselves claim that the privatized land never belonged to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences, and therefore the NABU's claims are null and void, and the privatization procedure is legal.

To establish the truth, NABU needs to prove that the land in question really belonged to the National Academy of Sciences. However, the score is still 0:2 in favor of Solsky. The first significant factor was the decision of the Supreme Court of Ukraine - the judges found that the land incriminated to Solsky had never really belonged to the NAAS.

This has now been confirmed by the scientific and legal opinion of experts. It also emphasized interesting details. It turned out that the state act for the perpetual use of land, which NABU relies on in its accusations, was handwritten. The state act was issued in 1953 to the Stalin artel. Subsequently, this artel changed its organizational form several times, including a collective and state farm named after Lenin, and as a result, according to NABU, became the state-owned enterprise Iskra.

However, the only evidence so far that the artel's land and Iskra's land are identical is that the phrase “in the name of Stalin” is crossed out by hand on the State Act and the word “Iskra” is written instead. There is no other evidence even in the NAAS itself.

So, according to the results of the examination, which are available to UNN, the said State Act cannot be considered a document that entitles the state-owned enterprises Iskra and Agrofirma Nadiya to use the land for an unlimited period of time.

The experts came to this conclusion even without taking into account the strange additions made with a ballpoint pen. After all, according to the legislation in force at the time, there was no such form of agricultural enterprise as an artel, and its change to the Iskra collective farm required appropriate amendments to the act. In addition, the Iskra collective farm was terminated by merging with the Lenin State Farm, and thus the relevant State Act ceased to be valid (in Soviet times, State Acts for perpetual use of land were not issued to these state farms).

Thus, the right to the land of the Iskra agricultural artel, according to the State Act on the Perpetual Use of Land of 1953, did not and could not transfer to the newly created Lenin State Farm. The said state farm had to obtain the rights to use the land in the general procedure by developing and approving a land management project with the establishment of the boundaries of this land plot in kind (on the ground) by the relevant land management authorities. However, these actions were not taken. Therefore, the land that in the 1950s was accounted for by Stalin's artels and Lenin's state farm cannot be considered identical to the land that the NAAS and NABU believe belongs to the state-owned enterprises Iskra and Nadiya.

By the way, a similar case has already been investigated by the Supreme Court. Among other things, the judges found that the land that used to be in artels and then became part of a collective farm had no legal connection, at least because of the lack of natural boundaries.

... the legal connection between the land plots granted to the Molotov and Voroshilov artels and the land used by the Rodina collective farm established in 1989 has not been proved, which indicates that the Rodina collective farm does not have any rights in respect of the land plot that is the subject of the dispute, and therefore the possibility of their violation by the defendants in the case

Optional

The correction of official documents with ballpoint pens is not the first strange manipulation in the case against former Minister Solskyi. Earlier, it became known that anti-corruption activists tried to “leak” the examinationthat they themselves had ordered and which, apparently, was supposed to testify to Solsky's innocence.

Context

NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors served former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyi with a notice of suspicion [2] for allegedly organizing a scheme to seize 2,500 hectares of NAAS land.

Solsky himself says that the circumstances of seven years ago, which are the subject of this case, relate to the period of his legal practice, when he helped ATO participants to obtain land plots. His defense lawyers claim that Solsky did not benefit from this.

In 2019, the Supreme Court put an end to the litigation over the disputed land plots. The decision of the panel of judges of the Commercial Court of Cassation confirmed the decisions of the courts of previous instances that SE Iskra and SE Nadiya of the National Agrarian Academy of Sciences do not have state acts for the right to permanent use of these land plots.

In dismissing the claim, the courts of previous instances concluded that there was no evidence of the transfer of the disputed land plots to the plaintiffs by way of succession, as different acts of transfer of land funds indicated different areas of land plots transferred from one enterprise to another, and that the fact of registration of the right of permanent use of land plots by legal entities whose successors are the plaintiffs had not been proved