Defense lawyers for former president Petro Poroshenko have asked law enforcement officials to open a criminal case against the State Bureau of Investigation’s Director Roman Truba for interfering in the work of investigators and disclosing information about a pre-trial investigation.
Poroshenko’s lawyer Ihor Holovan announced this at a news briefing, the Ukrainian News Agency reports.
According to him, the director of the State Bureau of Investigation has no right to interfere in cases being investigated by the bureau’s investigators, specifically the criminal proceedings involving Poroshenko.
“In today's interview (in the Strana.ua online publication), Truba helped us a lot by ‘confessing’ that he violated the law. He did it in such a way that we could not believe our luck," the lawyer said.
According to Holovan, Truba directly interfered in the work of the State Bureau of Investigation’s investigators and put pressure on them.
He also accused Truba of allowing confidential information about criminal proceedings to be leaked, with the leaked information later getting into the hands of former deputy head of the Presidential Administration Andrii Portnov, among others.
Poroshenko’s defense team believes that secret information, including military secrets, could fall into the hands of the Russian authorities in this way.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the National Police has opened criminal proceedings against Portnov on suspicion of knowingly filing false reports alleging commission of crimes by Poroshenko.
Earlier, the State Bureau of Investigation opened five criminal proceedings against Poroshenko based on reports filed by Portnov.
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