The other day, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NACB) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SACPO) served the Member of Parliament from the Servant of the People faction, Andrii Odarchenko, with suspicion of the alleged transfer of illegal profits in bitcoins to the head of the Agency for Reconstruction and Development of Infrastructure, Mustafa Nayyem.
The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) chose Odarchenko as a preventive measure in the form of arrest with the possibility of bail in the amount of UAH 15 million.
The politician himself rejects the charges against him, as he stated during the court session on November 22.
Thus, according to Odarchenko, he really communicated with Mustafa Nayyem and representatives of other state authorities on the issue of restoring the state biotechnological university.
"To the essence of the question - about communication with Mustafa.
I spoke exclusively about the allocation of funds, and this is not only the Recovery Agency, but also the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (CMU), the budget committee, which have already made decisions, exclusively for the state biotechnological university. That is, state funds - to the state university," Odarchenko said in the courtroom.
He also denied the prosecution's claims about "some sort of 'percentage'" agreement. "As for cutting (from phrases), when the prosecutor talked about some 8, 200, 116%. First of all, there were none," said the MP. Odarchenko added that he was searched by law enforcement officers, and he did not interfere with them in any way.
In the end, as the MP said, "nothing was found" at him.
"I was searched. I myself gave the keys to my apartment in Kyiv. I went to the Verkhovna Rada to work. I was not there and did not want to be present. I also did not even know that parallel searches were taking place in Kharkiv. Nothing was found.
I had one crypto wallet in my car. It has been seized, all the codes are there, it can now be opened and viewed. They seized the phone, which has the same program (for crypto transfers) that I installed and it is empty, and there is no transaction. And if there is any SMS from me to Nayyem (with the text) "hello", show it, please," said the MP, denying that he had sent such a message to Nayyem.
According to the investigation, Nayyem received an SMS allegedly from Odarchenko with the word "hello" as a sign of confirmation of the transfer of bitcoins to him.
We will remind that, according to the investigation, Odarchenko transferred about USD 10,000 in bitcoins to the crypto wallet of Mustafa Nayyem for the fact that Nayyem contributed to the allocation of funds for the restoration of the State Biotechnology University, where Andrii Odarchenko himself is the rector. The powers of rector Odarchenko are currently suspended for the time being while he is performing the powers of MP.
In the courtroom, during the choosing to Odarchenko a preventive measure, a video of communication, according to the investigation, between Odarchenko and Nayyem, was shown.
Odarchenko's defense called the footage shown "obviously falsified", pointing to the discrepancy between sound and image.
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