NABU cases are bursting at the seams: court revokes suspicion against former MP Hranovskyi

The High Anti-Corruption Court recently canceled the NABU's suspicion of former MP Oleksandr Hranovskyi. This is another clear example of the fact that cases of anti-corruption agencies often fall apart in courts. High-profile investigations that promised high-profile revelations and prosecutions often end in complete failure in court, UNN writes .

The NABU announced that it had served Oleksandr Hranovskyi with a notice of suspicion 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, the detectives did not find enough evidence, and on August 20, the HACC canceled the notice of suspicion to Hranovskyi.

The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office statedthat it considers the judge's decision illegal and unreasonable and is preparing an appeal to the HACC Appeals Chamber. It is not yet known how this case will develop further.

However, this is far from an isolated case when anti-corruption cases fall 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 their treatment of 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 expertswho 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.