Russian-friendly oligarch Vadim Novinsky was confident and brash when Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko announced in early November that prosecutors wanted to strip him of his parliament immunity, so as to press criminal charges against him.
Now it’s clear that the 53-year-old oligarch, the owner of the Smart Holding group and a partner of Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov, had good reason to behave in this way: Even the first step toward stripping him of parliamentary immunity has now been blocked by parliament.
The members of the procedural committee of parliament said on Nov. 17 that they hadn’t found enough evidence of Novinsky’s wrongdoing. That was after three hours of discussions between the committee, Novinsky and Lutsenko.
Novisky is suspected of participating in a plot, along with several other loyalists of former President Viktor Yanukovych, to oust the late Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan), the former leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The plot is alleged to have involved the illegal detention of a close church confidant.
The oligarch denies all the charges and says they are politically motivated.
“This is just a compilation of political declarations… There is no proof, no grounds for guilt,” Novinsky said at the parliament committee in response to Lutsenko allegations.
Lutsenko claimed the case was very important, since apart from Novinsky it also involves former President Viktor Yanukovych, former Interior Minister Vitaly Zakhrachenko and former Kyiv Police Chief Valeriy Koryak.
“Guys, this is a case of Yanukovych,” Lutsenko told the committee members.
According to the criminal case, which has now been published on the Ukrainska Pravda web-site, Zakharchenko and Koryak were in charge of the illegal detention by the police of Mytropolitan Oleksandr (Drabynko), a person close to the late Metropolitan Volodymyr. Novinsky was allegedly giving directions by phone to the policemen, himself acting under Yanukovych’s orders.
Passions ran high during the discussions at the parliament committee.
“You are a well-known polemiсist,” Novinsky said to Lutsenko.
“I’m the prosecutor general of Ukraine – you have no right to interrupt me!” Lutsenko snapped back.
After the parliament committee advised prosecutors to look for more evidence in Novinsky’s case, Lutsenko looked very disappointed.
“The lawmakers are not just covering Novinsky here. They’re making it impossible to send to court the shortest case against Yanukovych!” Lutsenko wrote on his page on Facebook.
“The case contains 15 volumes. One month of pre-trial investigation and two months of trial, and then it would go to sentencing.”
“Damn it,” he added.
Read more about Novinsky here:
