PGO trying to remove case on suspicion of dpty head of President's Office from bureau's investigative jurisdiction – NABU
The change in the suspicion of one of the participants in the case of embezzlement of the National Guard's property to a minor article not related to corruption indicates the intention of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) to create conditions for leveling the prosecution of Deputy Head of the President's Office of Ukraine Oleh Tatarov, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) said.
"The change in the suspicion of one of the participants in the case about the provision of an unlawful benefit for ensuring the issuance of an inaccurate written opinion of a forensic expert on a minor, non-corruption article of the Criminal Code testifies to the artificial creation by the PGO of grounds for removing from liability the persons involved in the commission of this crime, including the deputy head of the President's Office," the NABU said in a statement on its website on Friday.
The NABU said that in the presence of sufficient evidence obtained during the investigation, on January 27, 2021, the prosecutor reclassified the crime incriminated to the former MP [former head of Ukrbud Maksym Mykytas] to non-corruption (Part 4 of Article 27, Part 2 of Article 384 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
In this context, the bureau said the PGO has created "formal grounds for excluding NABU detectives from investigating a resonant crime, in which the deputy head of the President's Office is an accomplice.
The NABU said: "Since the examination, which resulted in an unreliable conclusion, was carried out on the fact of a criminal offense under investigation by NABU, it is the National Bureau that should carry out a pretrial investigation even after the change in qualifications.
According to the statement, the director of NABU appealed to the PGO with a resolution to request criminal proceedings and the need to entrust the investigation of this case to NABU detectives, but the PGO did not comply with these decisions.
Mykytas is currently under arrest on suspicion of organizing the kidnapping of a Kyiv's lawyer.