Facts

PGO chief sees SAPO's decision to close criminal case against MP Dovhy as unacceptable

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said that the decision by the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) to close a criminal case against MP Oles Dovhy (Will of the People faction) causes surprise and indignation, and Kyiv Prosecutor's Office registered a proceeding on embezzlement during the sale of land on the Zhukov Island wildlife sanctuary in Kyiv.

"I consider the decision by the SAPO to close the case against people's deputy Dovhy as unacceptable. The decision by the procedural leader in the criminal proceeding on its closure under Clause 3, Part 1, Article 284 of the Criminal Procedure Code – 'due to the inability to establish sufficient evidence to prove the guilt of a person in court and the impossibility of obtaining it' - causes both surprise and indignation," Lutsenko wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.

According to him, there is evidence in the Dovhy case.

"The whole country heard this [evidence] and on its basis the Verkhovna Rada stripped the deputy of immunity," Lutsenko said.

"Secondly, if the SAPO wanted to collect more evidence, then it should have been done in five months. Some 1,438 hectares of land were illegally stolen, but the SAPO cannot prove who did it," he said.

Lutsenko said that "today Kyiv Prosecutor's Office registered a proceeding on the large-scale embezzlement of property (Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) during the sale of more than 1,000 hectares of the capital's land on the Zhukov Island through so-called cooperatives."

"The statute of limitations under this article of the Criminal Code is 15 years," he added.

On December 28, it became known that the SAPO had closed criminal proceedings against Dovhy due to the fact that investigators had exhausted the opportunity to prove his guilt.

"Due to the ten-year remoteness of events that are the subject of investigation in criminal proceedings, as well as the destruction of the electronic information support system of the Kyiv City Council, taking into account the testimony of most witnesses in criminal proceedings and the absence of other procedural sources of evidence, the opportunity to obtain sufficient evidence to prove Dovhy's guilt in court has been exhausted," reads a SAPO ruling of December 22, 2017, which was made available to LB.ua.

Dovhy confirmed on his Facebook page that "the documents published on the site LB.ua coincide with the documents that his lawyers received officially last night from the SAPO."

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