Lawyers' community is concerned about NABU's idea to create its own forensic experts: it threatens justice

Lawyers' community is concerned about NABU's idea to create its own forensic experts: it threatens justice

Kyiv  •  UNN

September 18 2024, 02:09 PM  •  118053 views

The legal community expresses concern about the NABU's idea to create its own expert institution. This may lead to manipulation of the evidence base and jeopardize the objectivity of justice.

The idea of creating a separate expert institution under the NABU is worrisome, as it could lead to manipulation of the evidence base and jeopardize the objectivity of justice. This opinion was expressed in an exclusive commentary to UNN by Oleksandr Babikov, a lawyer and former First Deputy Director of the State Bureau of Investigation.

If the NABU manages to create its own experts - primarily technical, construction, and economic experts - they will be able to legitimize and essentially form the necessary evidence base regardless of the objectivity of the events. That is, it is, on the contrary, an attempt to add more experts to this narrow circle, which includes the HACC, NABU, and SAPO, and then no one will be able to hope for justice,

- he noted.

The lawyer emphasized that the expert should be an independent arbitrator who is not interested in the results of judicial research. However, in his practice, there were other examples.

We have already encountered expert opinions drawn up by NABU detectives calling themselves experts and submitting materials of criminal proceedings. These are exactly the cases when such pseudo-experts do not hesitate to do anything to form the conclusion the detective needs,

- Babikov said.

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Manipulation of examinations is a common practice for NABU, but it often plays against the detectives themselves. For example, as was the case with the examinations in the cases of Rotterdam+ and former Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan. According to lawyer Iryna Odynets, NABU lost in court because during the investigation, detectives in these cases "drew" forensic examinations in friendly private offices, and then unsuccessfully tried to confirm their accusations with them. Volodymyr Omelyan himself also noted that detectives engaged "dubious experts" during the investigation of the case against him.

In addition, the NABU tried to leak the expertise in the case against former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky, which they themselves had ordered and which was apparently supposed to testify to Solsky's innocence.

Given the repeated facts of such manipulations, the idea of NABU head Semen Kryvonos to create his own expert institution for the bureau looks extremely alarming. In this case, there may be many times more "painted" examinations, and thus NABU investigations may turn into biased persecutions similar to the mass political terror of the Soviet NKVD.

This was also emphasized by foreign experts who audited the NABU. The auditors believethat the creation of a criminal institution under the Anti-Corruption Bureau will not solve the issue of the objectivity of examinations in criminal proceedings investigated by detectives.

Political analyst Ruslan Bortnik also criticized the idea of creating a separate expert institution for the NABU, emphasizing that this would only lead to even more chaos in public administration.