Draft law #6220 undermines NABU independence and offers a tool to terminate any criminal investigation within NABU investigative jurisdiction.

The draft law, that has already been adopted in the first reading and might be finally adopted on May 18, 2017, provides, that any criminal investigation must be closed if an investigation of the same facts and/or/or events (circumstances)  has already been opened and then closed by any law-enforcement body.

Should the draft law be adopted, any politically dependent law-enforcement body may open and then close case against any NABU suspect in order to give the suspect strong grounds to demand termination of NABU investigation against him. Wording of the draft law implies, that no further investigation can be opened regarding same facts and events, even if second investigation offers different legal qualification of these circumstances and links them to different people. This gives PGO tool to prevent NABU from investigating cases even without violating rules on investigative jurisdiction.

Adoption of the draft law #6220 will undermine supreme exclusive investigative jurisdiction of NABU over corruption-related cases and undermine NABU independence.

If adopted, these provision will threaten cases that are currently investigated by NABU. At least 10 current NABU investigations are based on facts, regarding which other bodies have closed their investigations; 13 people are already informed of suspicion in these cases, 4 more cases are filed to the court and in 2 cases guilty verdicts are already made.

NABU has issued a negative statement on this draft law.

However, the VR Committee on Law-enforcement will consider the draft law #6220 for the second reading on May 17, 2017 at 3pm.

There are high chances that the law will be offered for adoption in the second reading on the plenary session on May18, 2017

 

See the original article here.