The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the Disciplinary and Qualification Commission of Prosecutors must establish the legality of the actions of the Prosecutor of the UGP Artem Boyarenko, who, according to journalist Oksana Kotomkina, illegally obtained her phone number and home address. The journalist, who is the coordinator of the legal publication "Conflicts and Laws", reported this in her column on the publication's website.
Pressure on journalists due to investigation
The scandal erupted after Oksana Kotomkina published an investigation into alleged violations in Artem Boyarenko's declaration, in particular regarding the sale of a car to his father. After the publication, the journalist received numerous letters from the person involved in the investigation, in which he demanded a refutation of the material. However, the prosecutor, according to Kotomkina, tried to force her to change the details that did not affect the main essence of the revelations, while ignoring the question regarding the sale of the car.
The situation took a more serious turn when the letters she received from Boyarenko contained her personal data — her home address and phone number, which were not publicly available. "After receiving the letter at my home address, I began to wonder what could happen next: a funnel under the entrance or a doorbell?" the journalist wrote, hinting at possible threats.
Questionable source of information
It deserves special attention that, according to Kotomkina, the prosecutor explained the receipt of her personal data by finding the number on the Russian LiveJournal resource. This caused indignation of the journalist, since the resource has long been blocked in Ukraine, and the mentioned post was published back in 2010. "This shows that the source of his confidence in the received data is not a Russian Internet resource at all," Kotomkina claims.
Investigation requirement
The journalist declared her intention to appeal to the Office of the General Prosecutor and the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors with a demand to investigate Boyarenko's actions in order to find out how he obtained her personal data and why he referred to the content of Russian sources. According to her, relevant statements will be sent in the near future.
