The Supreme Anti-Corruption Court (SAC) has ruled to drop the suspicion brought by the NABU against former MP Oleksandr Hranovsky. This decision is yet another indication that high-profile investigations by anti-corruption agencies often end in failure in the judicial system.
High-profile investigations that promised high-profile revelations and prosecutions often end in complete failure in court.
NABU publicly announced suspicion against Oleksandr Hranovsky back in October 2022. In their press release, the anti-corruption activists immediately stated that “the People's Deputy of Ukraine of the 8th convocation organized a scheme according to which the Odessa Port Plant sold mineral fertilizers to a predetermined company at prices below market prices.”.
However, over 2.5 years, detectives still did not find enough evidence, and on August 20, the VAKS canceled the report of suspicion against Granovsky.
The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office stated that it considers the judge's decision illegal and unfounded and is preparing to appeal it to the Appeals Chamber of the Supreme Judicial Council. It is not yet known how this case will develop further.
However, this is not an isolated case when anti-corruption cases fall apart in court. Another clear example is the anti-corruption cases against former Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan. He has repeatedly stated that detectives were biased in the case against him due to political bias. Both cases against him fell apart in court, but NABU did not officially apologize to the former minister for the illegal criminal prosecution and damage to his business reputation.
It seems that a similar situation will occur with the NABU case against former Minister of Agricultural Policy Mykola Solsky, who was accused of helping ATO veterans privatize land plots in Sumy region eight years ago. According to the detectives, these lands were in the use of the National Agrarian Academy (NAA) and could not be privatized.
However, the detectives' version was refuted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the NAAS had no rights to these lands, as well as by experts who studied the historical chronology of these lands from the 1950s and also emphasized that these lands could not have been included in the NAAS land bank.
It is likely that for a long time, NAAS was able to use the land it had seized and considered its own. This is evidenced, in particular, by the materials of some criminal proceedings, where NAAS employees were accused of seizing the lands incriminated to Solsky and ATO veterans. NAAS secretly leased these lands to farmers for growing their crops, although this is expressly prohibited.
So now the main intrigue of the NABU case against former Minister Solsky is whether the detectives will be able to prove their assumption that the lands were really in the use of the NAAS. If they can't, and the probability is high, the former minister will be acquitted.
