Lawyer: Judge in Liiev case finds no evidence that he benefited from contract with Lviv Arsenal
Kyiv • UNN
The investigating judge concluded that the investigation had not provided any evidence of collusion between officials and the director of Lviv Arsenal to embezzle public funds under the defense contract.
The investigating judge of the High Anti-Corruption Court in his ruling on the choice of a preventive measure for the former head of the Department of Military-Technical Policy, Development of Arms and Military Equipment of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Oleksandr Liev, stated that the materials of the prosecutors' motion lacked any evidence of his receiving undue benefit from the contract with Lviv Arsenal and prior collusion between the participants. This was stated by Liev's lawyer Nazar Kulchytsky in an exclusive comment to UNN.
"The ruling is very detailed, it has 17 pages. The investigating judge examined in detail all the arguments of both the prosecution and the defense... As for Oleksandr Liev, the investigating judge concluded that the investigation did not provide any evidence that such a conspiracy existed between the alleged conspirators at all. That is, there is no evidence that these people communicated with each other, agreed on any actions to commit a crime," the lawyer said, commenting on the investigating judge's ruling.
According to him, the investigation provided materials of covert investigative actions, in particular, the director of Lviv Arsenal Yuriy Zbitnev.
"All these conversations that they managed to record between different people - they prove, on the contrary, that no one intended to steal public money in any way. All their conversations were actually about how to fulfill this contract, but in no way about how to steal money or how to conceal this crime later," the lawyer believes.
Kulchytsky believes that the materials provided by the prosecution prove the innocence of these suspects.
"The third argument is that Liev did not actually receive any undue benefit from signing this contract and subsequent payment by the Ministry of Defense. In fact, the prosecution itself provided documents confirming that the money went to the Lviv Arsenal, which was actually a contractor of the Ministry of Defense, most of the money remained on the accounts of the Lviv Arsenal, and one third of the money was transferred to the account of the company that was supposed to supply the weapons to the Lviv Arsenal. That is, the money was paid only to the companies that were directly involved in the process of fulfilling this contract," the lawyer said.
In addition, lawyer Kulchytskyi drew attention to the remarks of the investigating judge about the publicity of this case in the media.
"The investigating judge pointed out that in fact there may be a situation where any person will be afraid to perform their functions, because any contract always carries a risk that it may not be fulfilled. This is why penalties and litigation to recover damages are provided for, and unfortunately, this happens from time to time. And in a situation where any of your actions can be interpreted as a crime, it can have a deterrent effect, especially in a situation where we are in the midst of an active full-scale war with Russia. This may result from the fact that officials will simply be afraid to take the necessary actions, because it will be safer for them," the lawyer emphasized.
Recall
In late January, the Security Service of Ukraine announced that it had uncovered a scheme to embezzle public funds during the purchase of ammunition. The officials in question were officials of the Ministry of Defense and managers of the Lviv Arsenal. According to the investigation, the criminals tried to steal almost UAH 1.5 billion of budget funds for the purchase of 100,000 mortar rounds for the Armed Forces. However, the funds were not at the disposal of any individual, but were kept on the accounts of Lviv Arsenal and were arrested.
On January 27, 2024, Liev was detainedas part of this case, but the High Anti-Corruption Court refused to apply any preventive measure to him due to lack of evidence.
Oleksandr Liev resigned from the Defense Ministry of his own free will a year ago on February 3, 2023.
