Key document “lost” in NABU case against ex-Minister Solsky

Not a single government agency has been able to find the original document to which NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors referred in their suspicion of former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyi. This is stated in the responses of these bodies to the requests of UNN.

This refers to the 1953 State Act for the lifetime use of land issued to the Stalin artel. Later, this act was crossed out with a ballpoint pen and instead of "Stalin's artel" it read "Iskra".

It is this document that NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors refer to in court as evidence that the state-owned enterprise Iskra had the right to use the land of the Stalinist artel for life, which was privatized by the ATO soldiers instead. However, even the investigation does not have the original of this document. This invalidates the entire evidence base, as a copy of such a "painted" document cannot have legal force.

In search of the original document, UNN sent inquiries to the NABU, the National Agrarian Academy and its subsidiary Institute of Agriculture, the State Geocadastre, and the Romny State District Administration of Sumy Oblast (where the disputed land is located).

The director of the Institute, Viktor Kabanets, stated that they had never seen such a document themselves. Employees of the SE Iskra also denied that they had it, saying that it might be in the archives of the National Agrarian Academy (NAAS) or the local state administration.

However, the NAAS also reported that they had never received such a document.

"Title documents for land plots, in particular state acts of legal entities, are stored directly with land users or the relevant executive body that disposes of state-owned land plots - central executive bodies of land resources in the field of land relations or its territorial bodies, and not in the National Academy of Sciences," the academy said in response to a request from UNN.

So, UNN also appealed to the Romny district administration, but they did not see the original of this document either.

"The originals of the state acts and their copies for the use of the land of the State Enterprise "Iskra" were not submitted to the archival department of the Romny District State Administration for state storage," reads the response to UNN's request .

It turns out that the original document is not available to all authorities, and the investigation uses only a dubious copy of it, crossed out with a ballpoint pen.

At the same time, in an interview with UNN, former acting head of the State Geocadastre Oleksandr Kolotilin called NABU's arguments regarding the ownership of land plots by the state enterprise Iskra on the basis of this State Act issued to the Stalin Artel in 1953 legal nonsense. He noted that in independent Ukraine there was no succession of Soviet artels and collective farms, and the copy of the act itself is questionable, as the name "Stalin's artel" was crossed out and "Iskra" was written instead.

He also emphasized that the companies Iskra and Nadiya, to which NABU attributes the disputed land plots, have never issued title documents for the land after Ukraine gained independence, which, in his opinion, indicates an improper approach to land use without official documents.

Context

This refers to the criminal proceedings in which NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors accuse former Minister Mykola Solskyi and former head of the State Geocadastre Oleksandr Kolotilin of organizing the seizure of land from the National Agrarian Academy in Sumy region to transfer it to the ATO military. According to the version of the detectives, these lands were allegedly used by state-owned enterprises of the NAAS (Iskra and Nadiya), and therefore could not be transferred to the ATO military. In their arguments, the detectives and prosecutors refer to a copy of the State Act issued to the "Stalin's artel", where "Stalin's artel" is crossed out and "Iskra" is added with a ballpoint pen.

Despite the fact that the proceedings themselves raise more questions than answers - some call it political persecution - the reasonable timeframe of the investigation has long been exhausted, as it concerns the events of 2017, when Solsky was a lawyer.

The Supreme Court and expert examinations ruledthat the NABU's accusations were false, as the land plots in question did not belong to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences and could therefore have been privatized by the ATO military on legal grounds, under the right granted to them by the state.

At the same time, detectives tried to hide and cancel the examination ordered by NABU in this case. There is a possibility that it could have testified to the innocence of Solsky and the ATO soldiers.

The ATO soldiers themselves are outraged by such actions of the NABU and are ready to prove the legitimacy of their actions.