"It all looks bizarre," said NABU detective Yarema regarding a key document from anti-corruption officials in the case against former Minister Solskyi.
Senior detective of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, Viktor Yarema, expresses skepticism regarding the "key document" referenced by his colleagues in the suspicion against former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyi. He stated this during the podcast "Corruption vs NABU," as reported by UNN.
This concerns a state act from 1953 granting lifelong land use rights, issued to the Stalin Collective. Later, this act was crossed out with a ballpoint pen, replacing "Stalin Collective" with "Iskra."
345678It is this document that NABU detectives and SAP prosecutors refer to in court as proof that the state enterprise "Iskra" had the right to use the land of the "Stalin Collective" for life, which was privatized by ATO veterans in return.
During the podcast, Detective Yarema discussed the most common schemes of land theft. One such scheme, he noted, involves NAAN enterprises failing to properly document land for years.
The detective's interlocutor pointed out that this is a very strange situation, as in some cases, such as Solskyi's, the documents are still from the "socialist republic."
"The case you mentioned does indeed look bizarre, but according to the Constitutional Court's decision, all these ancient documents, if they were properly issued and not revoked, are valid," Yarema stated.
However, it is worth noting that specifically in the NABU case against Solskyi, NABU detectives and SAP prosecutors refer only to a hand-drawn copy of the state act issued back in 1963, which is not even from the "Iskra" enterprise.
The original of this document has not been seen by any state agency—neither by NAAN, nor by the Institute of Agriculture of the Northeast, nor by the State GeoCadastre, nor by the Romny District State Administration in Sumy region (where the disputed lands are located).
This means that the investigation is relying solely on a questionable copy of a Soviet document, which was also drawn with a ballpoint pen.
Former acting head of the State GeoCadastre, Oleksandr Kolotylin, in an interview with UNN, called the arguments of NABU regarding the ownership of the land plots by the state enterprise "Iskra" based on this state act issued to the "Stalin Collective" in 1953, a legal absurdity. He emphasized that in independent Ukraine, there was no succession of Soviet collectives and cooperatives, and the copy of the act itself is dubious since the name "Stalin Collective" was crossed out and "Iskra" was written in its place.
He also noted that the enterprises "Iskra" and "Nadiya," to which NABU attributes the disputed land plots, have never formalized title documents for the land after Ukraine gained independence, which, in his view, indicates an improper approach to land use without official documents.
Context
This concerns a criminal case where NABU detectives and SAP prosecutors accuse, among others, former Minister Mykola Solskyi of organizing the appropriation of land from the National Agricultural Academy in Sumy region for transfer to ATO veterans. According to the version of the detectives, these lands were allegedly under the use of state enterprises NAAN ("Iskra" and "Nadiya"), and therefore could not be transferred to ATO veterans.
Despite the fact that the case itself raises more questions than answers—some call it political persecution—the reasonable timeframes for the investigation have long been exhausted, given that it pertains to events from 2017, when Solskyi was an attorney.
The Supreme Court and expert evaluations ruled that NABU's accusations are erroneous, as the specified land plots did not belong to NAAN and could then have been privatized by ATO veterans on legal grounds, based on the rights granted to them by the state.
At the same time, the expert evaluation commissioned by NABU in this case was attempted to be concealed and annulled by the detectives. There is a possibility that it could have indicated Solskyi's and the ATO veterans' innocence.
The ATO veterans themselves are outraged by such actions from NABU and are prepared to prove the legality of their actions.