“Metropolitan lawyers, who were interviewed by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) in 2023, said that the Bureau’s management is trying to prevent them from talking about the progress of the case in the media, specifying the appropriate narrative in the subpoenas. Lawyers associate such actions with the politicization of the process and violation of accountability by NABU. UNN writes about this. Lawyers, whom NABU considers “the most influential in the country”, claim that”, — write on: ua.news
Metropolitan lawyers, who were interviewed by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) in 2023, said that the Bureau’s management is trying to prevent them from talking about the progress of the case in the media, specifying the appropriate narrative in the subpoenas. Lawyers associate such actions with the politicization of the process and violation of accountability by NABU.
UNN writes about this.
Lawyers, whom NABU considers “the most influential in the country”, claim that the investigation against them is turning into a “protracted saga” due to violations and attempts to artificially “stretch” the qualifications of the case to a level that allows it to remain under the jurisdiction of NABU, SAP and VAKS.
- Consistency problems: According to them, suspicions are handed out haphazardly, in order to at least somehow “stretch” the qualifications for investigation by anti-corruption bodies. Lawyers point out that if the case had no signs of corruption, it should have long been transferred to the regular district police department for investigation.
- Disclosure of secrets: The lawyers claim that the detectives have completely closed the case materials from the defense, instead they are passing on selective information to “friendly media”, which “mirror” versions of the investigation, possessing “the secret of the pre-trial investigation”. Lawyers are preparing lawsuits against these media.
- Illegality of evidence: The detectives’ versions are based on audio recordings of the wiretapping, which, according to the lawyers, was illegal. They discovered the equipment itself in their office, in the meeting room where they talked with NABU clients under investigation. The defense claims that some media were seized without a court order, and the chain of custody of other media “is not transparent.”
Lawyers call the situation “an example of systemic pressure” and claim that the management of SAP and NABU “forces subordinates to engage in political massacres”, turning them into targets instead of fighting corruption.
Earlier, it became known that NABU had set a hearing in the lawyers’ office in 2023. The National Association of Lawyers of Ukraine called this a gross violation of attorney confidentiality. The European Court of Human Rights has already accepted the applications of eight lawyers, whose rights were, according to them, violated.
