The Anti-Corruption Action Center NGO has prepared a statement about criminal offenses committed by employees of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) of Ukraine in response to the launching of criminal proceedings against the organization and the PGO's request to a court to grant permission to seize the organization's possessions and documents.

"At the moment, we have found ourselves in a situation where we do not have an official status in the proceedings. We have no right even to appeal against this decision, because it is not provided by the Criminal Procedure Code. But we view the actions of employees of the law-enforcement agency (the PGO) as criminal, so we have prepared a statement about the crimes committed by employees of the Prosecutor General's Office. We believe that these employees are acting on the instructions of superior officers, such as [former prosecutor general Viktor] Shokin, Stoliarchuk and Sevruk [his deputies Yuriy Stoliarchuk and Yuriy Sevruk]. Their criminal actions include abuse of power and the entry of deliberately false information into the pre-trial investigations registry," lawyer of the Anti-Corruption Action Center Olena Scherban said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.

According to her, the organization's lawyers will ask the Prosecutor General's Office to close the criminal proceedings due to lack of evidence of a crime. "If the Prosecutor General's Office refuses to grant our requests... we will go to court," she said.

Scherban pointed out that the mere fact of launching criminal proceedings in connection with misappropriation of the funds provided by the U.S. government is illegal. "Because the ruling of the Pechersky court contains the description of the case, which fails to state the actions of any individual, including those from the Anti-Corruption Action Center resulting in stealing, embezzlement or misappropriation of these funds. There is no reference to a single provision of Ukrainian laws or international treaties which were allegedly violated by those featured in these proceedings. Therefore, objectively, no such crime took place," she explained.

Executive Director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center Daria Kaleniuk, for her part, stressed that after the incident representatives of the center met with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who expressed both publicly and in private conversation his full support for the actions of the organization. "The U.S. Embassy has no objections to the way we are carrying out the U.S. grant. Once again, this grant is not intended for the reform the prosecutor's office," she said.

Chairman of the Board of the Anti-Corruption Action Center Vitaliy Shabunin believes that the main goal of the Prosecutor General's Office is putting political pressure on the organization. "We have consistently criticized the prosecutor general and his two deputies Sevruk and Stoliarchuk, describing how in the past six months this team flushed key proceedings against [ex-president of Ukraine Viktor] Yanukovych and his associates down the drain. It is a simple revenge, including by Mr. Stoliarchuk. Recently, we have addressed Shokin with the demand to dismiss Stoliarchuk for the fact that while supervising the case of [businessman and former MP of the Party of Regions] Yuriy Ivaniuschenko, the court closed it because in the course of a year only one procedural action was taken – the questioning of the lawyer of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, who reported the crime," he said.

On March 25 it became known that the Kyiv Pechersky Court granted permission to investigators of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine to seize possessions and documents of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, as well as the documents containing information covered by bank secrecy laws and are owned by banks which service the center. The court order is dated March 22.

The Pechersky District Court issued this order in response to an application made by a senior investigator for particularly important cases of the division for criminal inquiries in the field of property of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, V. Mashyka.

"As part of the pre-trial investigation, the PGO investigators are searching the funds which the U.S. government assigned for the reform of the criminal justice system [in Ukraine] and which, in the PGO's opinion, should have come directly to the accounts of the law enforcement agency. As this interpretation of the use of international technical assistance is absurd, the Anti-Corruption Action Center considers the criminal proceedings to be a mere excuse for intervening and obstructing the work of the non-governmental organization, arresting its accounts and launching criminal proceedings against its employees, who have publicly criticized the work of the leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine," the organization said.