Telephone law, pressure on business or abuse of official powers in the interests of one of the participants in a corporate conflict?
In Brovary, in the Kyiv region, employees of the district police department, headed by Dmitry Shulgin, intervened in an economic dispute between the co-owners of a group of enterprises and are likely playing along with one of the parties by initiating illegal criminal prosecution of another participant.
In the capital region, a corporate conflict continues between Sergei and Konstantin Melnik, co-founders of a number of legal entities registered in the city of Brovary and the neighboring Chernihiv region. During the economic dispute, one of the opponents, Sergei Melnik, filed five complaints to the Anti-Raiding Office under the Ministry of Justice to change the composition of participants in all companies. Based on the results of the investigation, the commission of the Ministry of Justice refused to satisfy three of them, and left two more without consideration.
Cases are considered in the Economic Courts of the Kyiv and Chernigov regions, respectively.
It seemed that this could be put to rest, but the conflict went beyond the legal field and moved into the force field. After all, the Brovary district police department, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Shulgin, intervened in the business case.
Sergei Melnik, presumably counting on help from a certain “patron” in law enforcement agencies, on August 14 of this year wrote a statement to the Brovary district police department under Part 3 of Article 358 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“Forgery of documents, seals, stamps and forms, sale or use of counterfeit documents, seals, stamps, committed repeatedly or by prior conspiracy by a group of persons”).
The police demonstrated miracles of efficiency, and literally the very next day, August 15, these data were entered into the ERDR. And on August 16, subpoenas for questioning were sent to all participants in the companies (Melnik Konstantin and other co-founders), as well as to a private notary and state registrar. Two interrogations were conducted by the investigator of the Brovary District Police Department, senior police lieutenant Anastasia Polozuk.
Further, as entrepreneurs say, the Brovary police began “telephone terror”, constant calls, summonses for repeated interrogations, etc.
There have never been and cannot be any false documents. We note that all actions carried out by Melnik Konstantin, new participants, private notaries and state registrars for the alienation and registration of part of his share in favor of business partners were carried out in full compliance with the requirements of the current legislation, verified by a private notary and state registrar, who are vested with the appropriate functions,” note the current owners of the companies.
At the same time, for some reason the local police do not react in any way to dubious forceful actions on the part of Sergei Melnik (such as the unauthorized demolition of a fence on someone else’s territory). In addition, Sergei openly states that he actually “hired police officers and the TCC” to put pressure on his opponent, in particular by serving him a summons.
Based on these facts, Konstantin Melnik repeatedly turned to law enforcement officers, called the police, and wrote relevant statements. However, all of them, unlike Sergei’s statements, for unknown reasons remain without any response or investigation, and are not even included in the ERDR.
Note that the dispute between the Melnik brothers is exclusively civil, therefore it should be and is being considered by the Economic Courts within the framework of claims proceedings. But, contrary to the legislation and the decision of the Ministry of Justice, the brewing police, headed by Dmitry Shulgin, continues to actually “nightmare” entrepreneurs, their relatives and the cordon in the interests of Sergei Melnik.
What is this – abuse of official authority or a private “order”? According to the editors of StopCor, such actions by police are unacceptable, illegal and appear to be committed in favor of one of the parties to the corporate conflict, rather than establishing the rule of law. We hope that the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Police, as well as other competent law enforcement agencies, will give a proper assessment of the activities of the Brovary security forces, taking into account the stated facts and circumstances of the case.
