The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine or NABU announced on Sept. 14 that it would file a notice of suspicion against the first deputy chief of Ukraine’s SBU security service, Pavlo Demchyna.
Demchyna is suspected of making illegal earnings, which he denies.
The NABU said it had decided to make an announcement before actually serving the notice because information about the serving of the notice had been leaked and published by the SBU’s press service on Sept. 13.
If found guilty, Demchyna faces from five to 10 years in prison.
Demchyna has been working for the SBU since 1994 and was appointed as first deputy chief of the service in 2016.
Anti-corruption detectives have been investigating Demchyna’s case since March 2017 and the pre-trial investigation is not yet over. However, after the SBU deputy chief announced he was a suspect in a NABU case, the bureau decided to confirm the announcement and publish the details of the case.
While Demchyna says he found out about the case from his lawyers, the NABU said that the information had been leaked.
The bureau said that an official from SBU became aware of Demchyna’s case “almost immediately” after the NABU submitted the case documentation to the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.
The NABU is currently checking whether the SBU official obtained the information legally.
The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has not yet commented on the issue.
The anti-corruption detectives suspect Demchyna of making illegal earnings, as, according to their information, in 2015-2016 the expenses of the official and his family exceeded their income by Hr 3.8 million ($106,895). Demchyna didn’t provide in his declarations any evidence that the money had a legal origin, detectives said.
The SBU deputy chief denies the allegations.
“This is the false information,” Demchyna said during a press conference on Sept. 14.
He said he believes that the NABU opened the case against him in revenge, as at the end of 2017 the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine filed notices of suspicion against three NABU detectives, and he had initiated some of those cases.
The NABU detectives were suspected of bribery and provoking the taking of bribes, which the NABU denies.
The day before, on Sept. 13, the anti-corruption detectives served a notice of suspicion to another Ukrainian official, Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan.
He is suspected of making illegal earnings and filing inaccurate information in his electronic declaration of assets, which he denies.
Solomiansky District Court in Kyiv chose a precautionary measure for Omelyan on Sept. 14.
The Minister of Youth and Sports of Ukraine Ihor Zhdanov and People’s Front party lawmaker Fedir Bendiuzhenko bailed Omelyan out on their personal guarantee.
However, the infrastructure minister also had to submit his foreign passports to the court.
