Prosecutors did not ask court to authorize them to detain Member of Parliament of the eighth convocation (2014-2019) Tetiana Chornovol, the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) reported.
“Detention of Chornovol after reporting on suspicion without a permission of investigative judge is impossible. The prosecutors did not ask (the court) such a permission,” reads a statement of the SBI text of which was posted on the bureau’s website on April 14.
The SBI emphasized that Chornovol was not suspected of organizing or participating in mass protests.
“The information voiced by Chornovol that she is charged with committing crimes under Articles 170, 294, 146, 122, 121, 125, 126 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is unreliable.”
Earlier, Chornovol said that she could be taken into custody after interrogation at the State Bureau of Investigation. “There is information that tomorrow (April 14) after interrogation at the SBI I will be taken into custody and taken to the Pechersky court,” she wrote on her Facebook and announced that the meeting would begin at 14.00.
On April 10, the SBI searched Chornovol’s dwelling, where she lives with two children. Later, the SBI reported that Chornovol was notified of suspicion of having been involved in setting the office of a political party on fire in February 2014, as a result of which a person was killed.
The SBI, in turn, declares that the bureau worked beyond politics. Later, the National Agency for Corruption Prevention of Corruption (NACP) announced that Oleksandr Babikov had no conflict of interest during the exercise of the powers of the SBI first deputy director.
According to the SBI, after the transfer of the investigation into the case of arson of the Party of Regions’ office from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the special investigations department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, no investigative actions were carried.
The decision on the allocation of criminal proceedings against Chornovol and the determination of the jurisdiction of the SBI administration in Kyiv was made on March 25, 2020, by the prosecutor of the Department of the Procedural Manual of Criminal Proceedings about crimes committed in connection with the mass protests in 2013-2014. As of the date of the decision, the said Department was subordinate to Deputy Prosecutor General Trepak,” the bureau said in a statement.
Thus, as the department explained, the First Deputy Director of the SBI Babikov is not the head of the pre-trial investigation body, and, accordingly, cannot make procedural decisions and influence the course of the investigation of the criminal proceedings against Chornovol.
“Since the Department on Investigation into Maidan cases has been set up at the SBI, it has been subordinate to acting director Sokolov,” reads the statement.
