The Higher Anti-Corruption Court (HCC) decided to cancel the suspicion brought by NABU against former People's Deputy Oleksandr Granovsky. This decision became another evidence that high-profile investigations by anti-corruption bodies often end in failure in the judicial system.
High-profile investigations, which promised high-profile revelations and prosecution, often end in complete failure in court.
NABU publicly announced the suspicion of Oleksandr Granovsky back in October 2022. In their press release, the anti-corruptionists immediately stated that "the People's Deputy of Ukraine of the VIII convocation organized a scheme under which the Odesa Port Plant sold mineral fertilizers to a pre-determined company at prices lower than market prices."
However, in 2.5 years, the detectives did not find enough evidence, and on August 20, VAKS canceled the notice of suspicion against Granovsky.
The specialized anti-corruption prosecutor's office stated that it considers the judge's decision to be illegal and unfounded and is preparing to appeal it to the Appeals Chamber of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It is not yet known how this case will develop further.
However, this is far from an isolated case when anti-corruption cases fall apart in court. Another vivid example is the case of anti-corruption officers against former Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan. He repeatedly stated that the detectives were biased towards the case against him due to political involvement. Both cases against him collapsed in the courts, but NABU did not officially apologize to the ex-minister for illegal criminal prosecution and damage to business reputation.
It seems that there will be a similar situation with the NABU case against ex-Minister of Agricultural Policy Mykola Solskyi, who was accused of aiding ATO veterans in the privatization of land plots in the Sumy region eight years ago. According to detectives, these lands were used by the National Agrarian Academy (NAAS) and could not be privatized.
However, the detectives' version was refuted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that NAAS had no rights to these lands, as well as experts who studied the historical chronology of these lands from the 50s of the last century and also emphasized that these lands could not have entered the NAAS land bank.
Probably, for a long time the National Academy of Sciences could use the land that it self-seized and considered it its own. This is evidenced, in particular, by the materials of some criminal proceedings, where employees of the National Academy of Sciences were accused of self-seizure of lands incriminated to Solsky and veterans of the ATO. These lands were secretly leased by the National Academy of Sciences to farmers to grow their crops, although it is expressly forbidden to do so.
So for now, the main intrigue of the NABU case against ex-minister Solsky is whether the detectives will be able to prove their assumption that the land was really used by NAAS. If they cannot, and the probability is high, the ex-minister will be acquitted.
