Kyiv Commercial Court has ruled that the Ukrainian state must pay more than Hr 25.4 million ($900,000) in compensation to a store in Kyiv for watches, jewelry, and money it lost during a joint raid by police and prosecutors in August 2014.
The court decision, published on Jan. 3, said that Kyiv prosecutors and police searched jewelry salon Graff in Kyiv downtown on Aug. 20, 2014, in connection with the alleged sale of counterfeit items contaminated by radiation
After the investigators left, the salon’s staff, who were not allowed to be present during the raid, saw broken display cases, and found more than 100 expensive watches and items of jewelry, as well as money from the safe, had been stolen, according to the court decision and media reports.
The video from CCTV camera available on the Youtube shows the masked men searching the office and putting some staff to their pockets.
The video of the police raid in Graff salon on Aug. 20, 2014, filmed by CCTV camera.
The salon’s staff also later told the media that at the end of the raid the investigators drank the expensive cognac and smoked cigars which they found in the shop.
Kyiv prosecutors closed the case against the jewelry salon in September 2014 due to the absence of evidence of a crime, but failed to return the jewelry.
The shop’s manager reported the robbery to the police. Law enforcement opened three criminal cases on robbery and abuse of power, the Court Reporter, anti-corruption and judiciary watchdog reported.
In 2015, the cases of robbery and abuse of power involving 10 police and prosecution officials were sent to court, but hearings have yet to be held.
Moreover, one of the defendants, Vitaliy Savchuk a senior prosecutor of Pechersk district in Kyiv who was fired as a result of an internal investigation in February 2015, was reinstated in his post by a court decision in August 2015.
The court also ruled that Savchuk be paid more than Hr 38,000 ($1,700) in salary for the period he had been fired, according to the court decision.
Kyiv Commercial Court in its ruling of Jan. 3. said the amount of compensation to the jewelry salon, based on estimates by the Kyiv Institute of Forensics Expertise, was less than the Hr 29 million (over $1 million), demanded by the claimant.
The Kyiv prosecutors office plans to appeal against the court ruling within a month, its spokesperson Nadiya Maksymets told the Kyiv Post.
