SBI employees promised Hrynkevych freedom in exchange for testimony against Kudrytskyi – court hearing
11 February 12:41
During the court hearing in the case against Igor Hrynevych regarding the extension of the preventive measure (detention) applied to his son, the defendant’s lawyer disclosed details of the communication between representatives of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and Igor Hrynkevych in the context of the case against former Ukrenergo head Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, according to Apostrophe, citing a broadcast of the hearing, as reported by Komersant.
According to lawyer Kostyantyn Doroshenko, he was personally present during the conversation between the SBI employee and Igor Hrynkevych, who was offered to testify against Volodymyr Kudrytskyi in exchange for his release from custody.
“Under the pretext of conducting investigative actions, Igor Hrynkevych was brought from the detention center, and before this interrogation, the SBI employee offered Igor Hrynkevych to give incriminating testimony against Kudrytskyi.
In return, Igor would be released from custody for himself and his son.
I don’t know how they would have ensured this, but the key point is that it was a bargain. They also promised punishment that would not involve imprisonment.
Ihor categorically refused to give false testimony against Kudrytskyi, because giving false testimony against a person he had never seen was not in his nature,” the lawyer said.
Doroshenko added that while the Hrynkevychs are in pretrial detention, “the State Bureau of Investigation is trying to use blackmail to turn them into a tool for putting pressure on other people for non-procedural, political purposes.”
The representatives of the prosecution present in the courtroom did not comment on these statements by the defense of Igor and Roman Hrynkevych, and the judge only clarified whether the lawyers had filed complaints about such actions by the State Bureau of Investigation.
“The Kudrytskyi case”
In October last year, the State Bureau of Investigations announced that it had notified Lviv businessman Igor Hrynkevych of its suspicions and detained the former head of NEC Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, as part of criminal proceedings concerning the alleged “fraudulent appropriation of tens of millions of hryvnias from a state-owned energy company.”
According to the investigation, the parties organized tenders for the reconstruction of the external fencing of substations of the Southern and Western power systems. As a result of the tenders, two contracts were signed for a total amount of over UAH 68 million.
“After signing the contracts, Ukrenergo transferred advance payments of over UAH 13.7 million to the contractor. As established by the investigation, these funds were immediately withdrawn through fictitious companies and appropriated without any intention of performing construction work,” the investigation stated.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi categorically deniedthe investigation’sversion , calling the case against him a “political order.”
Ihor Hrynkevych also rejected the accusations, noting that “he, like Kudrytskyi, had never even been questioned during the seven years of the investigation into the Ukrenergo case.”
