Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court on Aug. 27 gave the Prosecutor General’s Office access to records of investigative journalist Natalie Sedletska’s cell phone data for the past 17 months, according to the official court register.
Sedletska is the chief editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Schemes investigative television show. The move is part of a case against Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine or NABU. Sytnyk is accused of divulging a state secret by leaking information to journalists.
The secret, which was allegedly leaked by Sytnyk at a meeting with journalists in May 2017, concerns an unlawful enrichment case against a top prosecutor, Kostyantyn Kulik.
Kulik was charged with unlawful enrichment of Hr 2 million in 2016, but has not been suspended or fired since then.
Anti-corruption activists see the case as part of the conflict between the authorities and the politically independent NABU, which has taken over the investigation of top-level graft cases from the Prosecutor General’s Office, the head of which is appointed by the president.
“This decision (on access to Sedletska’s conversations) is excessive, blatantly violates international standards and does not comply with Ukraine’s obligations to defend the freedom of speech,” RFE/RL spokeswoman Joanna Levison said, cited in a Sept. 4 statement by RFE/RL.
The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
RFE/RL’s lawyer Anatoly Popov said that the prosecutors’ actions “violate human rights and respect for privacy” and constitute “pressure on a journalist as part of their professional activities and illegal access to a journalist’s sources of information.”
Popov said that the court had given the investigators much more information than necessary – not just the phone calls log in May 2017, when the meeting between Sytnyk and journalists allegedly took place, but records of calls placed over the past 17 months, as well as her texts and location records.
RFE/RL has published numerous investigative reports about top officials, including Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
“It’s a pity that the country’s incumbent leaders, who came to power after the (2013-2014) Revolution of Dignity, denigrate and despise the basic principles of democracy, including the freedom of speech – democracy’s cornerstone – despite using the slogans of protecting free speech and sometimes having served prison terms under previous regimes,” Hromadske Television, the Kyiv Post, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, the Slidstvo.info investigative show, Sevgil Musayeva-Borovik, chief editor of the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper, and other media and journalists said in a joint statement. “We also demand that law enforcement agencies carry out their direct functions – for example, investigate the murder of our colleague Pavel Sheremet and corruption covered by journalists, including Sedletska, all the time – instead of pressure on and trials against journalists.”
Sheremet was murdered on July 20, 2016 by a car explosion in Kyiv.
Kristina Berdynskykh, a journalist at the Novoye Vremya magazine and a witness in the same case, lambasted the court’s decision on Facebook.
“I’m wondering whether my phone will also be checked and for which period,” she said. “There’s no court warrant for that yet. Or are you interested only in a specific person or the head of a specific investigative show?”
