The expertise by Kharkiv Human Rights Group published Monday calls into question legal reasoning and evidence behind criminal charges brought by state prosecutors against former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko who is now facing a pile of 20 criminal cases ranging from the one of relation to facilitating a ‘tomos’ autonomy status for Ukrainian Orthodox Church to smuggling arts.
A 32-page indictment document starts, for whatever reason, with an extended introduction on history of the United Nations and lists alleged offences dating back to 2014-2015 with ‘over 50% of the formal charge having either not a single relation to the case, or [at most] some circumstantial relation, which raises doubts over its rationale’.
Poroshenko is facing a charge of acting ‘in the detriment of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability’ under art.111 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, which assumes such acts must be willful.
The wathdog report says investigation claimed Poroshenko’s main ‘wrongful intent’ was to escalate tensions with Russia to ‘satisfy own political interests’ and prevent his ‘political ratings from decline’, yet ‘wording used for the willful act [in this charge] shows no Poroshenko’s wrongful designs constituting high treason’.
As Poroshenko’s actions in question were part of his presidential authority, proving his direct intent comes as hardly attainable task given the subjective reasoning he had to follow at the time of the events.
The expertixe also says bringing a charge of ‘creation of a terrorist group or terrorist organization’’ under art.258 of Criminal Code will probably see prosecutors stumble over the same ‘direct intent’ issue as the indictment offers no arguments that prove that Poroshenko’ s ‘securing energy supplies to Zmiyvska and Trypiska power plants that remained operative in occupied Donbas was really ‘high treason’ and ‘abetting terrorists’.
Another obvious weakness of the indictment is its lack of hard facts and details as most claims come with words like ‘unidentified’ and ‘unclear’.
The criminal case also took flak over procedure violations as the indictment was unlawfully rubberstamped by interim chief prosecutor while active chief prosecutor Iryna Venediktova and her deputy Oleksiy Symonenko called in sick to avoid responsibility for it.
Kharkiv Human Rights Group experts drew attention to inconsistencies about the dates the formal notice of indictment was issued and given to Poroshenko as prosecutors assimingly tried to inform him of the charges on December 17 while records show it was issued later, on December 20.
Picking holes in the indictment proved an easy task as ‘investigation failed to provide legal reasoning of Poroshenko’s high treason and support of terrorists and gave no evidence he acted ‘willfully’ while ‘the indictment doesn’t even discern events that constitute high treason and support of terrorists under art.111, 258-3 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code’.