MPs Victoria Siumar and Rostyslav Pavlenko stated this in a comment to ‘Priamyi’ TV channel.
The State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) suspects General Ihor Pavlovskyi, a former Deputy Minister of Defense, and Valerii Shandra, a director of ‘Kuznya na Rybalskomu’ ship building company, in organizing the supply of ‘low-quality military equipment’ to the army in 2016-2018. These are combat boats and ambulances, which according to the DBR do not meet the established requirements and cannot be used in the Armed Forces. The DBR claims that such a ‘scheme caused the state losses amounting to more than 475 million hryvnias’.
On June 7, Kyiv Pecherskyi District Court remanded Valerii Shandra in custody.The court arrested him for 60 days with the possibility of bail of 44 million hryvnias.
On July 12, the court granted the investigators’ request and took General Pavlovskyi in custody for two months with an alternative bail of more than 475 million hryvnias.
On August 2, the Court of Appeal reduced the bail to 50 million.
Rostyslav Pavlenko, a ‘European Solidarity’ MP, notes that the amount of bail of more than 400 million is ‘torture’.
‘According to the definition of European international institutions, this is a kind of torture. Such an amount is obviously a non-alternative arrest. According to the procedural code, the bail should correspond not to the amount of alleged damage, but to the circumstances of the case and the property of the accused, and therefore there are no grounds for such a huge amount’, the MP said.
MP Victoria Siumar joined criticism of the decision arguing the excessive amounts of bail are evidence of the political motivation of the case and a violation of human rights.
‘This case has good prospects in the European Court of Human Rights, as it will show that Ukrainian citizens are taken into custody even when the crime is not related to violence.’
Pavlenko is convinced that ‘justice in this case will soon be restored’. The MP predicts the lawyers will file an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights due to illegal bail and detention of the defendants.