The Rada adopted a law allowing to blackmail deputies

The Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading a bill on amendments to criminal procedure legislation, thereby completely freeing the hands of investigative authorities in relation to Ukrainian deputies.

This decision was made during the next plenary meeting, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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The representative of the president in the Constitutional Court, Fyodor Venislavsky, spoke about the bill.

“This bill proposes to amend the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, as well as the law on the status of people’s deputy of Ukraine, in particular, to amend Article 27, which guarantees overly broad guarantees of parliamentary immunity.

The point is that not only the arrest and involvement of a people's deputy requires the consent of the Verkhovna Rada, but also inspection, search, inspection of things, an office - today this law does not comply with the Constitution of Ukraine. Therefore, it is proposed to remove these provisions from the law,” Venislavsky said.

He also added that this bill provides for amendments to the law on forensic examination, expansion of the powers of the director of NABU, facilitating the investigation of some pre-trial investigations, as well as granting the SBI and NABU the right to remove information from transport telecommunication networks.

After which Nikolai Knyazhitsky, a deputy from the European Solidarity party, came out with sharp criticism, emphasizing that this “pro-Russian” law is a direct road to corporate raiding.

“In essence, it is proposed to adopt a pro-Russian, Stalinist law. According to this law in Russia, a person who wrote on the Internet “killed the slave within himself” was sentenced to a year for extremism, for violence against himself, because this was done by uncertified experts, which is what this law proposes. The law prohibits a person from knowing her conviction and what she is accused of, which is contrary to the Human Rights Convention, a right that has been confirmed by the UN Human Rights Committee.

The law allows confiscation from third parties if that person may or may not have known that the property was acquired legally or illegally. This is an open path to raiding and deprivation of property to ordinary citizens. This law allows arrest without bail. That is, we provide the right to bail for rapists and murderers, and we take away the right to bail from people who are being persecuted for political reasons,” he was indignant, adding that a deputy should not be prosecuted for political reasons, because this could become a reason another Watergate.

In turn, Viktor Bondar, a deputy from the “For the Future” party, admitted that although this law has many positive things, it will return Ukraine to “Stalin times” and lead to the arbitrariness of the investigative authorities.

“With this bill, many Soviet norms that existed for the Soviet prosecutor’s office are returning. It will be impossible to appeal in the courts against illegal actions and unfounded decisions of detectives and investigators. There will be no set period from the moment the proceedings are opened until the suspicion is served on the person. These criminal cases are opened for 5-10 years, and while they are being considered, we can all be under these criminal cases, and the prosecutors themselves will continue the terms.

Investigators themselves have the right to independently involve experts in each criminal case. The norm that gave the right to challenge a notification of suspicion to any person is excluded, that is, you will not be able to challenge, you will wait until the criminal case is over and transferred to the court, which will make a decision,” he said, adding that the timing of the investigation and the involvement of experts will also end up in the hands of prosecutors.

The decision to adopt the bill was supported by 297 out of 402 people’s deputies, and only the factions “Opposition Platform – For Life” and “European Solidarity” completely ignored or refrained from voting. After which parliamentarians decided to halve the time frame for preparing the bill for the second reading.

Let us recall that earlier the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law amending the Constitution of Ukraine, thereby abolishing parliamentary immunity, which will now allow Vladimir Zelensky to keep a tight rein on the entire Ukrainian parliament.