AntAC Brings an Action Against Lutsenko for Secret Decision on Confiscation of “Yanukovych’s Money”

Today, November 15, District Administrative Court of Kyiv starts proceedings of the action brought by the Anti-corruption Action Centre NGO against Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, Military Prosecutor of ATO Forces, State Judicial Administration and State Enterprise “Informational Court Systems” for classifying the decision of Kramatorsk Court regarding 1.5 billion USD confiscated from Yanukovych.

The AntAC demands to revoke a number of decisions that classified the decision and to publish it in the Unified Register of Court Decisions.

Daryna Kalenyuk, AntAC’s CEO, told about that in her column today.

AntAC members explains the need to resort to the court as “the investigators of the Prosecutor General’s Office” were unable to prove anything significant in the case” and so they confiscated the money making the plea deal with the dummy director – but not by proving guilt of the owners of the confiscated assets.

The activist calls void the plea deal recognizing guiltlessness that served basis for $1.5 billion “Yanukovych’s money” confiscation.

The AntAC believes the prosecutors made the plea deal with a “scapegoat” that was not actually able to testify or give evidence that was the grounds for special confiscation.

“We want to stop any future attempts of the Prosecutor General to confiscate assets of third parties resorting to classified court decisions that approve dubious plea deals. A dangerous trend has nothing in common with the supremacy of law principles, inviolability of the right of property and guarantee of protection of rights of people in the criminal proceeding. Such practice allows criminals-millionaires to restore their control over corrupt assets via international courts while prosecutors get a chance to raid ordinary business”, – writes Ms. Kalenyuk.

The organization explains that there were so many respondents in the court case because numerous bodies were involved in the process of classifying the court verdict, and all their decisions are unlawful.

First, the court decision was classified by the military prosecutors of Anatolii Matios – in order “to protect he witnesses”, then Prosecutor General Lutsenko classifies “top secret” the whole text of the verdict as it “contains data that is state secret regarding the fact or the methods of secret investigative actions”.

In fact, the data about those who helped Yanukovych to withdraw the money and how it was done was completely withheld from Ukrainians – when the accomplices received the status of witnesses, and then everything was classified and concealed from the public and journalists.

“The validity of Lutsenko’s conclusion is dubious, and the circumstances cited there do not stipulate in any way classifying the whole descriptive part of the verdict” – writes Ms. Kalenyuk; she explains that the Criminal Procedure Code directly prohibits putting any data of state secret into such verdicts and plea deals.

If the court verdict contains confidential data, then it is concealed in the verdict – explains the AntAC. At the same time, the rest of the text remains available to the public.

“These facts are obvious violations of the law, that is why the officials that helped the Prosecutor General to conceal the verdict from the public must be held accountable”, – writes Ms. Kalenyuk.

We remind that on March 28, Kramatorsk City Court approved by its verdict the plea deal of Arkadii Kashkin, the former director of “Gaz Ukraina-2020” company, and confiscated 1.5 million USD belonging to Yanukovych and his inner circle by the same verdict. The verdict came into force in a month, and the confiscated money was transferred to the state budget, but the court decision’s text was never published.

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