“On January 19, the higher anti-corruption court considered in closed session the petition of the SAP prosecutor to seize the property of Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the “Batkivshchyna” faction, who is suspected of offering a bribe. ”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Source: “Society” from the courtroom
Details: As journalists report, at the beginning of the session, the defense’s doubts regarding the legality of the composition of the court became the central topic. Yulia Tymoshenko stated that the NABU, SAP and VAKS system acts as “the only mechanism of political repression”.
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The suspect’s main argument was the allegation of possible interference in the system of self-distribution of judges. According to Tymoshenko, the prosecutor allegedly knew the name of the presiding judge before the system officially distributed the case.
“This means that both the previous composition of the court and this composition of the court are illegal. And therefore, all the decisions that were made as a result of this are illegal. We are not declaring an appeal now, because we are preparing detailed documents for an appeal to the PACE Monitoring Committee and an appeal,” Tymoshenko said.
The prosecutor of the SAP appealed to the court with a request to hold the session in closed session, citing the need to protect the secrecy of the investigation and personal data. The judge upheld this decision. Tymoshenko’s lawyers Maksym Soroka and Oleksandr Gotin categorically opposed this.
“The defense is against it because we want the whole country to see what’s really going on in this process,” Gotin said.
The defense argued its position by the fact that publicity is the only safeguard against the “court”, and the concealment of the process only confirms its ordered nature.
Previously, the defense emphasized the publicity of the process and denied the validity of the suspicion, calling the case a “political order.” During the meetings, Tymoshenko claimed that the funds seized during the searches were “family savings”, and work documents and telephones were seized without proper grounds.
As you know, Tymoshenko and her team consistently criticized the work of the newly created anti-corruption bodies, in particular NABU and SAP. Thus, Tymoshenko voted for the elimination of the independence of NABU and SAP and campaigned for this decision from the rostrum.