KYIV. Nov 23 (Interfax-Ukraine) – A government order suspending Roman Nasirov as head of the State Fiscal Service (SFS) of Ukraine is unconstitutional, he legally remains the SFS head, and the president should restore his constitutional rights, according to his lawyers.

"We cannot rule out that criminal proceedings against Roman Nasirov were ordered and were part of a plan, on the one hand, to discredit the authorities and, on the other hand, to remove Roman Nasirov from the post of head of the State Fiscal Service," lawyer Liubomyr Drozdovsky said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

After announcing a joint statement of Nasirov's defense team, the lawyer recalled that on March 3, 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers removed him from his duties as SFS head.

"We believe that the Cabinet of Ministers, under an unlawful motion from the finance minister, adopted an unconstitutional act on the removal of Roman Nasirov from fulfilling his duties as head of the State Fiscal Service. In this regard, we believe that the guarantor of the constitution - the president of Ukraine - should restore the constitutional order in the state and stop violating human rights... The president has all the constitutional powers to suspend the Cabinet order... as this act does not comply with the Constitution of Ukraine," he said.

Drozdovsky said that disciplinary proceedings had not been launched and an official investigation had not been conducted with respect to Nasirov, so he could have been removed from the fulfillment of his duties as SFS head only on the grounds stipulated by the Criminal Procedure Code.

"After NABU detectives showed an unlawful notice of suspicion to Nasirov of committing a criminal offense, he could have been removed from office only on the basis of a motion from a NABU detective or a SAPO prosecutor, and the court should have considered it. The Cabinet of Ministers, by adopting an unconstitutional order... went beyond its constitutional powers," the lawyer added.

At the same time, he said that Nasirov was currently the SFS head, since the Cabinet of Ministers had removed him only from the performance of his duties, not from the post itself.

"Nasirov, legally remaining the SFS head, was unconstitutionally deprived of the right to exercise powers in this position. As a result of the unlawful decision by the Cabinet of Ministers, he has been unlawfully suspended from his duties for more than seven months... Given that the issue of unconstitutionality of acts of the Cabinet of Ministers is in the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, we believe that the president of Ukraine as the guarantor of the constitution... should have stopped the violation of human rights," the lawyer said.

Drozdovsky said that prosecutors currently continued to study the materials provided by the defense team, although an indictment was approved on November 10 and the case was sent to court.

According to him, the defense team provided prosecutors with about a hundred volumes of documents, including expert opinions, in which the suspicion brought against Nasirov is completely refuted, and this, according to the lawyer, will become the basis for closing the case due to the absence of the crime.

That is, the lawyer said, the indictment was approved without taking into account the evidence of the defense team about the illegality of the suspicion.

"In our opinion, the main goal of their [NABU's and SAPO's] public statements was to discredit the head of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine before the Ukrainian society and the attempt of the leaders of these anti-corruption bodies to create a negative image of the head of a central government agency," he said.

Lawyer Oleksandr Lysak, in turn, said that NABU conducted an examination, on which the charge is based, in a private institution, which cannot serve as evidence.