The international fight against crime is a priority area for the Prosecutor General’s Office activities. Our institution is the central body for extradition, international legal assistance and takeover of criminal proceedings, as well as it is responsible for liaising with the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation. This year 13 Eurojust coordination meetings were held with the participation of representatives of Ukrainian law enforcement bodies to exchange information in the investigations which are simultaneously conducted in several countries.
Within the framework of our cooperation with Eurojust, we obtained information from colleagues from the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in the German city of Bamberg about the exposure of a large-scale fraudulent scheme of which Ukrainians are suspected, and immediately initiated our own investigation. The estimated monthly turnover of such criminal activity ranged from 8 to 10 million euros. Most of the victims are citizens of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
According to the German Prosecutor’s Office, the scheme of appropriation of funds has been in effect since 2017. The organized group of citizens of Ukraine and other countries carried it out under the guise of attracting investment through specially created web resources. Such websites allegedly allowed their users to earn money by buying and selling various assets: bank metals, foreign currency, cryptocurrency, securities, etc. However, investors were misled – with the help of the software interface of the sites, purchase and sale agreements were simulated, and the return on invested funds fictitiously increased 100 times and more.
When depositors applied for cash withdrawals, they received calls from employees of specially created call centres, as representatives of trading platforms, and demanded to provide an additional 15% of the amount of received funds as a service fee and a charge for cashing out. After payment, investors’ accounts were blocked, and the funds placed on them were appropriated by the organizers of the fraudulent scheme.
The examination found that the funds of investors paid through such sites were actually credited to the accounts of a number of companies controlled by the organizers in the United Kingdom, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia and other countries with their subsequent legalization.
European law enforcement bodies searched residential premises and call centres in Serbia and Bulgaria, during which 9 persons involved in this activity were detained.
Ukrainian law enforcement has now continued the investigation of German colleagues. We have received the necessary materials in the framework of the established international cooperation between the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Strategic Investigations Department of the National Police, Eurojust and Europol, and have already carried out a number of important investigative actions.
At this stage, the Ukrainian investigation has established that the citizens of Ukraine, who were involved in the organization of the scheme and actually managed the work of the sites, withdrew funds through controlled business entities and legalized them on the territory of Ukraine.
During searches at the places of residence and criminal activities of the persons concerned, cash equivalent to USD 1 million, draft records, documentation and other evidence were found and seized.
Luxury cars, apartments, a house and real estate with an estimated value of about 50 million euros were seized within the criminal proceedings.
The Ukrainian investigation will actively cooperate with the competent authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany in the framework of international legal assistance in order to bring all those involved to justice as soon as possible.
All analogous requests from the competent authorities of foreign countries addressed to the Ukrainian law enforcement and the latter’s international requests addressed to foreign colleagues go through the Prosecutor General’s Office. Those are requests for procedural actions, interviews of persons, seizure of documents, etc.
During 2020, more than 2,200 of such requests for legal assistance from 47 countries and more than 100 requests for the takeover of criminal proceedings were processed. The largest number of such documents was received from Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Austria.
Another 500 requests for legal assistance and 10 requests for the takeover of criminal proceedings, which were sent by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to 58 countries, were also considered. The majority of them were sent to Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the USA and the Czech Republic.
Our task is a thorough study of each document received from foreign states or sent to them for compliance with international treaties and Ukrainian law. We are not a postal service that sends everything it receives.
The effectiveness of the pre-trial investigation and observance of its reasonable time limits as well as the observance of the rights and freedoms of citizens subject to criminal prosecution depend on such a thorough examination. Furthermore, each such decision affects the image of Ukraine as a European state that fulfils its international obligations.
In addition, for instance, during the extradition procedure, the prosecutor’s task is to verify the status of lawfulness during the apprehension, imposition of preventive measures on a person, and their actual surrender. We must also ensure that mutual interstate guarantees for the extradition of a person with a view to criminal prosecution are complied with.
This year we have significantly intensified our work in the field of international cooperation on extradition, in particular, with the competent authorities of the United States, Georgia and other countries. Two members of the management of the Islamic State terrorist group, one of the leaders of the Taliban movement and two people accused of fraud and money laundering for the amount of about $145 million were extradited.
In total, during 2020, the Prosecutor General’s Office made 72 decisions on requests for extradition of foreign states, and 37 offenders have already been transferred. In addition, 82 requests for extradition from Ukrainian pre-trial investigation bodies were sent to foreign states. Despite the problems of international traffic caused by the pandemic, admission of 21 offenders to Ukraine was arranged for.
In addition, the Prosecutor General’s Office is a key link in the organization of international search for a person within criminal proceedings and acts as a guarantor of all legal and current decisions under which a foreign law enforcement agency temporarily detains a person.
We are processing requests from the Ukrainian pre-trial investigation bodies for international search for offenders using the INTERPOL channels. This year, 232 requests were considered, and the intention to request extradition of 162 offenders was confirmed.
In some cases, in 2020 international joint investigation teams have been set up for the competent authorities of Ukraine and foreign states to conduct coordinated investigations into criminal proceedings on the most serious and complex transnational crimes. This year, the Prosecutor General signed 8 agreements on the establishment or continuation of activities of such teams.
Working within a joint investigation team with international partners over six years in the case of the downing of the Malaysian Boeing over the occupied part of Ukraine has made it possible for the whole world to observe the process taking place in The Hague. Hearings in respect of four suspects have been ongoing since March this year.
Another global crime is the downing with missiles of the Ukrainian Boeing (UIA airline) in the sky of Iran. 176 people being citizens of 6 countries were killed in the air crash. Here we must skilfully apply the rules of international law to be able to investigate the crime without access to the territory where it was committed.
In order to establish the objective circumstances of the air crash, the Prosecutor General’s Office sent 17 requests for international legal assistance to the countries of Europe, Asia and North America and provided them with appropriate support.
The use of international tools to gather evidence, analysing open data sources, and operating with the case law of the International Court of Justice makes prosecutors work their way to establish the truth.
In addition, we use the mechanisms of international cooperation in criminal proceedings to protect Ukraine’s interests from violations of its sovereign rights.
For 7 years prosecutors and other law enforcement officers have been continuously collecting evidence for the criminal actions of the aggressor, the Russian Federation, against Ukraine and defending the rights of injured Ukrainians in all instances.
More than 20,000 crimes related to armed conflict have been documented and are being investigated in more than 5,000 criminal proceedings. A special Department for Procedural Guidance for Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict has been established in the Prosecutor General’s Office. This year, this unit has notified 54 people of suspicion in committing particularly grave crimes.
We already have hundreds of people convicted by Ukrainian courts who have committed crimes related to armed aggression and we also have prosecuted citizens of the Russian Federation, some of them in absentia.
And we are moving towards the protection of the sovereign rights of the Ukrainian people in international institutions as well. Since 2016, prosecutors, together with international non-governmental organizations, have sent a total of 15 information reports to the International Criminal Court on the most serious crimes committed against the Ukrainian people.
With regard to the events in eastern Ukraine, information was provided on the evidence that the Russian Federation commands the control over outlaw armed formations operating in the region, as well as evidence of murder, extrajudicial executions, torture, and humiliation of dignity in armed conflict, illegal detention and other serious crimes against people’s life and health.
Regarding the events in Crimea, the information on the following has been forwarded: forced movement of our citizens from the territory of the peninsula, deportation, illegal destruction and misappropriation of property, use of the civilian population as a “human shield’, the militarization of children and other.
This complex and voluminous work has finally paid off – on December 11, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court made a historic decision. ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has announced the completion of a preliminary examination of events in Ukraine related to the international armed conflict in Donbas and Crimea, and will recommend initiation of a full-fledged investigation into the situation in Ukraine.
This is the first important step in the international process, and we hope that the proper satisfaction of Ukraine’s interests will be upheld so that those who are unfortunately inaccessible to Ukrainian justice, in particular the top leadership of the Russian government, do not escape criminal responsibility.
