2000 hectares of land and meaning of Polish blockade: what became known in trial of Minister Solskyi
This week, the parliament could consider the resignation of several ministers. The list included the Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyi. But on Monday evening, a small faction of the Servants decided to postpone the personnel issue until May. And on Tuesday morning, it became known that the NABU and the SAPO had served Minister of Agrarian Policy Solskyi with suspicion.
"Well, they didn't have time to fire," one of the Servants joked in a conversation with Censor.NET.
In fact, the Deputies with whom the author spoke spoke favorably of the minister. "In fact, he is very smart and effective. He is 100% Bohdan's man, and if he were not effective from a statehood perspective, he would have been replaced long ago for political reasons," said another source.
It was Solskyi who lobbied last year for a draft law to lease out the land of state-owned enterprises through the ProZorro system. For your understanding, until recently, about a million hectares were in the possession of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences alone, where it is not clear who made their millions. Now there are less than 500,000 hectares of such land left.
Even within the framework of conspiracy theories, the interlocutors of the publication did not rule out that someone wanted to turn Solskyi out in order to gain control of the land of state-owned enterprises.
In addition to Solskyi, his deputy Markiian Dmytrasevych received a suspicion. However, it was served in absentia, as Dmytrasevych is currently abroad. According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, Dmytrasevych went on a business trip to North Macedonia on 12-21 April and then went on another business trip to Brussels for talks on Ukraine's accession to the EU.
This nuance is worth paying attention to, given what Solskyi said in court on 25 April.
But more on that later.
The court hearing to choose a preventive measure for Solskyi began on 24 April.
According to the NABU, as a result of the scheme, in 2017-2021, the participants in the scheme took possession of 1250 land plots with a total area of 2493 hectares, worth over UAH 291 million at the time.
"They also attempted to seize 3,282 hectares of land worth about UAH 190 million, but were prevented by NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors who conducted searches and seized the plots," law enforcement officials said in a statement on the day the suspects were served with the notice of suspicion.
According to the SAPO, in 2017, a number of people had a criminal plan to gain possession of the lands of state-owned enterprises Nadiia and Iskra by dividing them up in favor of ATO participants, with the subsequent transfer of the company Dovira 2008, owned by the current Deputy Minister Markiian Dmytrasevych. In particular, it was about land plots near the village of Perekhrestivka in the Sumy region.
According to the SAPO representative in court, in 2017, officials of the Main Department of State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre (StateGeoCadastre) in the Sumy region illegally exempt about 2000 hectares of land access of State Enterprise (SE) "Iskra" and State Enterprise "Experimental Farm Agroindustrial Firm "Nadiia" and transferred them to private ownership.
In particular, in March 2017, Iryna Suslova, a member of the previous convocation of the Parliament, filed an appeal regarding the legality of the use of land in the Sumy region by SE Iskra and Nadiia. According to the prosecutor, as a result of this appeal, employees of the StateGeoCadastre concealed some of the documents on the ownership of these lands by the enterprises and drew up an act of illegal possession.
After that, one of Dmytrasevych's enterprises applied for the lease of this land, a commission was organized and the land was included in the auction. "Then the accomplices moved on to the third stage - the transfer of land to citizens they had found in advance on the condition that they would then be leased to Dovira 2008 LLC," the prosecutor said.
According to the SAPO representative, Solskyi was the initiator and organizer of this scheme. However, there is no direct evidence that such an initiative was presented in court at this stage. Most of the evidence presented in court was based on correspondence, where representatives of the group tried to get the decision they needed to alienate the land of the two SEs.
Among other things, the court read out correspondence between the defendant in the case, Dmytrasevych, and a representative of the StateGeoCadastre in Sumy region, Malikova, in which the latter asked the land recipient what the strategy to pursue. The group members agreed on their position in court. In particular, what to say about the act dated 1952, which was supposed to confirm the ownership of the state-owned enterprise and which is mentioned in the cadastre.
The prosecutor also mentioned the correspondence between Solskyi and Dmytrasevych, where the latter reported to the future minister on the progress of the case. At the same time, she admitted that the correspondence contained only technical information about when the trial would take place and what information would be provided. It should be noted that in 2017, Solskyi was not a government official, but only a lawyer.
The prosecutor told the court that, among other things, there is evidence to file a technical claim in court to block another process regarding the land.
"Solskyi writes to Dmytrasevych: 'Watch this very carefully and help me'. Dmytrasevych agrees to this," the prosecutor read the case file in court.
"Next, Solskyi supervises Dmytrasevych in the preparation of court decisions. In particular, in those cases where the parties are the State Department of the StateGeoCadastre in Sumy region and SE Iskra on the other hand. In particular, Solskyi asks when you can send me the decision on Sumy. Projects. To which Dmytrasevych replies that he needs a lawyer to go and take photos of the files," the prosecutor said.
In another correspondence, Dmytrasevych coordinates with Solskyi the position on the act, which would have referred to a permanent use. This correspondence also contains a certificate recommending not to provide a copy of the act at the request of SE Iskra and Nadiia and to report its unavailability, as the existence of the act could lead to the registration of the right to use the land for these enterprises. Instead, it was proposed to provide a certificate of the existence of the act.
In the prosecutor's opinion, this correspondence indicates that its participants took actions to destroy the act.
"Call the head of Perekhrestivka, because we promised to tell him how to behave with the prosecutor's office and not call," the prosecutor further quoted the correspondence between Solskyi and Dmytrasevych.
The court also presented interrogation materials, excerpts from correspondence and notes from notebooks, which were supposed to confirm that a group of ATO participants had been specifically gathered to receive land.
"Do we have enough civilians for the plots in Perekrestivka," the prosecutor read out the notes of a group member. "That is, the primary issue here was not people, but land plots that the accomplices want to take possession of," she said.
The same notebook states that Dmytrasevych's company, Dovira 2008, is part of the Avis agricultural holding, which is run by Serhii Kalashnyk. The name of Buhrymenko and his phone number are already listed there. It also contains the figures 8-10%.
There is also a note in the notebook that says "second batch - 95 people". This refers to those who were yet to receive their plots. It also contains information that the payment for the registration of the plots was made by representatives of Dovira 2008, and only then was this money to be deducted from their rent payments.
According to the SAPO representative, Mykola is constantly mentioned in the private correspondence of the defendants in the case, and everything is coordinated with him. Among other things, the participants in the scheme prepared certificates on cases for him, and he decided which courts should he file technical claims in. According to the investigation, it was Solskyi.
At some point during the reading of the correspondence, the judge clarified whether Solskyi was a public official at the time. The SAPO representative noted that in 2017 he did not hold public office, but had a lawyer's licence. Similarly, Dmytrasevych was not a civil servant or a deputy.
"But we still have a lot of materials about the following years," the prosecutor added.
Somewhere around this point, the court was adjourned because Solskyi said he had to meet with People`s Deputy. It was a meeting with the so-called "small faction" of the Servants. The People`s Deputy did not share too many details. They only said that if there was a decision on the pre-trial detention center, then they would vote for his resignation. One of the participants of the meeting pointed out that Solskyi was in a combative mood. "After all, this is an old case. Everyone knew about it," the source said.
The next day, during the continuation of the meeting, a representative of the prosecutor's office read out evidence relating to Solskyi's years as a deputy.
In particular, the materials contain correspondence in which Dmytrasevych's brother asks Solskyi, who was already a deputy at the time, to influence representatives of the StateGeoCadastre.
She also read out the points of the action plan:
- Figure out whose holding is with Tarasovych;
- A cover from the authorities.
"There is a note on the back. In Novoselivka, 2.3 million was paid, the chief gave 2.5 million," said the SAPO representative.
There is also an entry in the notebook of the defendant in the Antoniuk case: "Mykola will take the money himself and sort it out".
In addition, as part of the presentation of the criminal intelligence and surveillance operations materials, excerpts from the dialogues of other persons were read out, from which the prosecutor concludes that Solskyi also appoints his man in charge of the State Enterprise "Horse Breeding of Ukraine" to "take possession of land by force". In another dialogue, it was said that one of the participants called the "brassed off" Solskyi, who was presenting amendments to land legislation in parliament at the time, because "he needed money".
Among other things, the investigation seized reports on the use of cash from the drives starting in 2014.
The defense lawyers strongly disagreed with the prosecution's position, emphasizing that there was no evidence that Solskyi had received any benefit from the case.
"Solskyi, according to the prosecution, financed this criminal operation himself, but did not receive any benefits - he was not a beneficiary of Dovira-2008, he did not receive any land, nor did his relatives," the minister's lawyer Nazar Kulchytskyi countered the accusations.
"Dmytrasevych, according to the investigation, worked really hard in a criminal organization from 2017 to 2023 for $600, which he was supposed to be paid. In our opinion, such a version does not meet not only the criterion of suspicion but also the plausibility in general," the lawyer said.
He also drew attention to the fact that the participants failed to realize their criminal intent. "We have no evidence of a conspiracy, except for a single mention of some other 2,000 people," the lawyer added.
In his opinion, since the investigation lasted for 5 years and had no result, they decided to serve someone with suspicion.
"What did they take possession of? We hear that two state-owned enterprises owned a certain number of hectares, and according to the prosecution, since they had the right of permanent use, these plots could not be transferred to the ownership of a private person, which is allegedly confirmed by a 1952 land act issued to Artilstal. However, there is no evidence that these enterprises are its successors. These enterprises were formed by the National Academy of Sciences in 1991. Let me remind you that there is a Supreme Court ruling on this matter from 2018, which dealt with similar circumstances. The Supreme Court concluded that even the existence of such an act cannot be a confirmation of the right to permanent use of this land," the lawyer said.
He also noted that in this decision, the Supreme Court noted that the acts of that time were issued without a clear indication of the boundaries of the plots, their reference to points, and so on.
The lawyer also reminded that in previous years, the aforementioned state-owned enterprises Iskra and Nadiia had lost commercial courts of the third instance over the plots.
There is only one decision of the Sumy court in favour of the companies. "That is, the situation is a little different from what prosecutors say," he said.
"Therefore, all the arguments that something has been violated are groundless," the lawyer stressed.
"Throughout the prosecutor's speech, it was never mentioned what the mercenary motive of our client was. Not that the amount was not mentioned, but the motive was not mentioned," the lawyer stressed.
According to him, law enforcement agencies have not provided any evidence of Solskyi's involvement in the creation of the group.
"They did not even provide evidence that the said Mykola was Solskyi. I looked it up yesterday, and I have 36 Mykola's in my phone book," the lawyer noted.
He also recalled that the transfer of the plots took place in 2019, and therefore there is a question of what the NABU, whose task is to prevent crime, did in the remaining years.
As the prosecutor requested that Solskyi be held in custody, given that he had left on a business trip with Dmytrasevych after the search warrant was issued, the lawyers replied that this was not entirely true, as he returned to the country while the ruling was still in effect.
During the hearing, the lawyers stated that Solskyi was not going into hiding. According to them, the minister had traveled abroad 21 times on official business trips approved by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and returned each time.
"He has three minor children, and Solskyi will not run away from them abroad. His fourth son is studying at school abroad. If the investigation thinks that this is an ideal accomplice to hide, I have nothing to add," the lawyer said. He also noted that the first searches took place in 2020. Therefore, everyone knew about the case.
The criminal defence lawyer also noted that the bail amount of UAH 200 million requested by the prosecutor's office is twice the amount of Solskyi's total income.
"The prosecutor is asking for a specifically unprofitable amount for my client. Five years have passed, there can be no risks. I ask to reject any preventive measure," the lawyer said.
Solskyi, speaking before the court, assured that he believed that Iskra and Nadiia had no right to the land. "And this position is confirmed by court decisions, as my lawyer said," the minister said. He reminded that the companies were supposed to re-register the land for themselves, not to register it. "I can register horses on Mars, but it doesn't matter," he stressed.
Solskyi also noted that the examination for NABU was carried out without an on-site visit, which has been prohibited for 10 years.
Explaining his trips abroad, Solskyi told the court that, in addition to business trips, he had gone for medical treatment (which he had agreed on in advance and which was confirmed) because he had a blood clot. At the same time, he returned while the search warrant was still in force.
Regarding Dmytrasevych's trips, Solskyi said that as deputy minister, he had a lot of business trips. And that the criminal intelligence and surveillance operations materials definitely contain his text messages in which he asks not to be sent anywhere else.
Solsky also said that Dmytrasevych's trip to Brussels was not advertised, "because the EU accession talks were opened there and we did not want to tout it in order not to scare the Poles, but it can't be helped".
"40% of the documents that we have to adapt (to EU legislation) are related to agriculture - this is the most difficult story. When you are asked to do some financial monitoring, there are no discussions with the Poles or Hungarians about it. Here, it's the opposite. The blockade is a consequence of this history (of negotiations on joining the EU). Markiian Dmytrasevych is responsible for everything related to agriculture (in this context). He has an incredible number of business trips," the minister explained.
Solskyi promised that his deputy would return this weekend.
Regarding cooperation with the Agrarian Academy of Sciences, Solskyi said that he had met with its head twice during his time in the Rada, and last year he "probed" a draft law to sell the land through ProZorro. He also noted that as a deputy, he could not influence the StateGeoCadastre because at that time the land had been transferred to communities, and in the first months of the war, land privatization was suspended.
Despite the fact that Solskyi was quite confident in court, it became known in the evening that he had written a letter of resignation.
"Yes, I have written a letter of resignation from the post of Minister. In this situation, I think it is a wise step. If the Verkhovna Rada decides to accept my resignation, I will be grateful for such a decision, and if it decides that I should continue working, I will continue working," the minister commented on his statement.
In the morning, it became known that the court had imposed on Solskyi a pre-trial restraint in the form of detention or bail of 75 million.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor. NET
