The SBI and the Office of the Prosecutor General reported a new suspicion in the so-called “Grinkevich case,” which was handed to an official of the Ministry of Defense due to an alleged reduction in penalties for companies supplying military uniforms.
The lawyer in the Grinkevich case, Alexander Melnikov, commented on the new investigation charges, explaining the reasons for their occurrence.
“Let’s start with the fact that the SBI has been investigating the supply of allegedly low-quality uniforms to the Ministry of Defense for almost a year. And during this time, the investigation did not have any questions regarding the delivery dates in the contracts. Now the stage has come when all legal deadlines for holding persons in custody have almost been exhausted, and the investigation has been forced to end. The defense began to get acquainted with the case materials and saw that the case had no judicial prospects. It is obvious that his public consideration in the trial will turn into a mockery of the prosecution. It was at this time that new suspicion arose allegedly for “reducing fines for Grinkevichs.” This can hardly be called an accident, especially considering the fact that the case materials do not contain evidence of the Grinkevichs’ guilt or evidence that they caused any losses to the state. In this context, I will briefly remind you that no one made any advance payments to the companies supplying uniforms, and due to the position of the SBI, currently more than 100 thousand sets of new and high-quality uniforms of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have not been delivered to military units,” Melnikov noted.
He further explained that the SBI, in covering “the grounds for new suspicion against a local government official,” again resorted to manipulation of facts.
“Firstly, not a single official of the Ministry of Defense “canceled or reduced any penalties for anyone,” as stated in reports from the State Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Prosecutor General. We were talking exclusively about the decision of the Customer, represented by the Ministry of Defense, to extend the validity of supply contracts for objective reasons, which were recognized by the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. To date, these agreements have not been canceled or terminated by anyone. They logically completed their action within the established time frame. Secondly, these agreements were concluded in such a way that the local government (through litigation) repeatedly defended its interests, based precisely on these agreements. And thirdly, and most importantly, we see how, with this new suspicion, the SBI and prosecutors are trying to deliberately and artificially criminalize purely economic relations,” added Alexander Melnikov. According to him, this is not the first time that the Grinkevichs’ defense has encountered such manifestations of abuse on the part of pre-trial investigation bodies.
“At first, the SBI accused the Grinkevichs of stealing about 1 billion UAH, then it turned out that they bought the uniform with their own money. After this, the State Bureau of Investigation changed its version and began to make claims about the quality of the goods. Subsequently, investigators deprived the defense of any opportunity to conduct an independent examination of the quality of the uniform, literally blocking access to clothing samples. Now that the case is almost in court, and the facts of falsification of proceedings and abuses of the investigation will become public, the State Bureau of Investigation realized the inevitability of the collapse of the case. Accordingly, in a hurry, after a year of investigation, they resorted to a new round of falsification and pressure in the form of accusations against representatives of the Ministry of Defense. There is only one goal here - to at least somehow prolong the existence of the reality distorted by them,” Melnikov concluded.
