Kryvonos is suspected of sham adoption to evade criminal liability, - Kravchenko. VIDEO
NABU Director Semen Kryvonos had previously forged a child’s birth certificate in order to secure an amnesty in a case involving the bribery of students.
This was reported by Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, according to Censor.NET.
Details
According to the prosecution, in June 2009, the Holosiivskyi District Court heard proceedings against Kryvonos on charges that he, acting in collusion with a group of individuals, had committed a crime against citizens’ electoral rights.
In particular, the Prosecutor General’s Office noted that Kryvonos, together with others, bribed students at two universities in the capital. To carry out this plan, Kryvonos and his accomplice were allegedly given 90,000 hryvnias, which was used to ‘bribe students’.
During the competitive selection process for the post of NABU Director, Kryvonos explained this information by stating that he had been actively involved in the university’s community activities.
"Together with a group of like-minded students, we opposed the administration of one of the universities because of their attempts to persuade us to vote for candidates who were favourable to that university’s administration. Law enforcement officers were set upon us; they acted very roughly, and several students were detained," Kryvonos said at the time.
According to the director of NABU, there was no bribery involved. Nor did he have any idea that he was the subject of a criminal investigation.
At the same time, the Office of the Prosecutor General noted that Kryvonos had devised a "criminal plan" which allowed him to evade criminal liability.
"Semen Kryvonos’s criminal plan consisted of creating a fabricated pretext, on the basis of which he would be eligible for amnesty. One such legal ground, at that time, was having a minor child.
To this end, Semen Kryvonos enlisted the help of an accomplice, who found him an unmarried woman with a child, the father’s details of whom had been recorded in the birth register at the mother’s instruction," the OGP states.
Subsequently, Semen Kryvonos, together with his accomplice, taking advantage of the trust of the said individual and her status as a single mother, misled her and convinced her of the need to help Semen Kryvonos. To this end, the suspects in the criminal offence concocted a story that Semen Kryvonos was allegedly working abroad and that his immediate employer had requested documents confirming that he had a dependent child, the Office of the Prosecutor General added.
"The essence of the unlawful request was to submit a joint application to the Civil Registry Office by the woman (the child’s mother) and Semen Kryvonos for the recognition of Semen Kryvonos’s paternity of the child, followed by the issuance of a forged birth certificate in which Semen Kryvonos would be listed as the child’s father.
This criminal plan was subsequently carried out," the statement reads.
At the same time, as established by the investigation, after legally acquiring paternity of another man’s child, Kryvonos had no intention whatsoever of fulfilling his parental responsibilities.
"After obtaining a forged birth certificate from the Civil Registry Office, in which Semen Kryvonos was listed as the child’s father, he, with the aim of misleading the court, submitted a petition to the Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv requesting that amnesty be applied to him, to which he attached the forged certificate.
In the aforementioned application, Semen Kryvonos asked the court to apply the provisions of the then-current version of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Amnesty’ to him, citing the fact that he allegedly had a minor child to support.
Subsequently, on 25 June 2009, the presiding judge of the Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv, having been misled, on the basis of the motion filed by Semen Kryvonos and following the court’s examination of the forged birth certificate attached to it, issued a ruling whereby Semen Kryvonos was unjustifiably exempted from criminal liability pursuant to the application of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Amnesty’ to him, the OPG noted.
In May 2018, the OPG reported, Kryvonos filed a claim with the court seeking the removal of information identifying him as the father. Subsequently, the information identifying Kryvonos as the father was removed from the child’s birth certificate.
"Thus, the investigation established that Semen Yuriiovych Kryvonos, with the aim of avoiding conviction in the case concerning the bribery of students – which, in addition to an actual restriction or deprivation of liberty, would also have deprived him of the right to hold public office in the future – devised and carried out a criminal plan, which consisted of forging a birth certificate and thereby misleading the court.
In relation to this incident, Semen Yuriiovych Kryvonos has been charged under Parts 2 and 3 of Article 358 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine," the OPG concluded.
Suspicions against Kryvonos
- Earlier, Ruslan Kravchenko stated that he had signed a notice of suspicion against NABU Director Semen Kryvonos and a person close to the head of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on the Rada to immediately support the dismissal of Ruslan Kravchenko from the post of Prosecutor General.
- NABU and the SAPO described Kravchenko’s actions as a continuation of a systematic attack on anti-corruption bodies.
- According to the AntAC, Kravchenko left the country on the night of 14 September.
- Subsequently, the Prosecutor General stated that he is currently abroad on a business trip.
- According to sources at Censor.NET, Kravchenko registered his trip abroad as an official business trip to Brussels.
