Lawyer suspected of attempted bribery of public official
On March 2, 2023, NABU and SAPO notified the head of a private company of suspicion of abuse of influence. His actions fall under Part 1 Art. 369-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Since the suspect is a lawyer, the charges were sanctioned by the head of SAPO.
As established, in 2019, the public enterprise "State Land Cadastre Center" launched a tender for the purchase of servers to administer the public cadastre system. As the winning company supplied the equipment which did not meet the relevant technical requirements, the buyer refused to pay and accept it. The seller, for its part, appealed to the Commercial Court of Kyiv to collect payment of UAH 37 million from the public enterprise. In 2022, the court satisfied the plaintiff's request, after which the enterprise appealed the decision.
In order to avoid further litigation and not to risk the cancellation of the decision, the lawyer offered a representative of the enterprise to "tackle the issue" beyond the court by influencing other officials. For UAH 1 million, the enterprise had to withdraw the appeal, and after the equipment was paid for in full, the representative would have received half a million hryvnias more. The official did not accept the offer and filed a report with NABU.
The operation to expose the briber was conducted along with the Cyber Security Department of the Security Service of Ukraine.
According to Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine, a person is considered not-guilty in the commission of a crime and cannot be subject to criminal punishment until he or she is found guilty by court.