Rada grants Prosecutor General access to all NACB cases and authority to sign suspicions against top officials himself

The Parliament adopted in the second reading draft law No. 12414 with amendments that give the Prosecutor General access to all NACB cases and the authority to sign suspicions against all top officials himself.

The Ukrainian News agency reports this with reference to Verkhovna Rada members Oleksii Honcharenko and Yaroslav Zhelezniak.

263 parliamentarians voted for the adoption of the draft law with these amendments out of the 226 minimum required for the adoption of the law.

The draft law provides that:

• the Prosecutor General receives access to all NACB cases or may provide such access to any other prosecutor;
• has the right to give mandatory written instructions to NACB detectives and, in case of their failure to comply, change the subject matter of the investigation, transferring the case to other bodies;
• may close the investigation at the request of the defense;
• resolves disputes about the subjectivity of the investigation;
• independently signs suspicions against top officials;
• the head of the SACPO loses the right to be part of the group of prosecutors - this is decided only by the Prosecutor General.

The NACB notes that now the head of the SACPO actually becomes a nominal figure, and the NACB loses its independence and turns into a unit of the Prosecutor General's Office.

"The anti-corruption infrastructure of Ukraine, built since 2015, will be destroyed," the NACB statement says.

According to the NACB, these amendments actually destroy the independence of the NACB and SACPO and actually subordinate their activities to the Prosecutor General.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, Member of Parliament Yaroslav Zhelezniak said that the Servant of the People faction submitted a bill for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada today on the actual liquidation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NACB) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SACPO).

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