Policy

Poroshenko’s lawyer comments on the ‘coal case’: no one is preparing any changes

The lawyer of the fifth President Poroshenko, Ilya Novikov, has denied the information that the State Bureau of Investigation is allegedly preparing Poroshenko to be charged in the “coal case,” according to

“In fact, there is no news, it was a drill, we can disagree. No one is preparing any changes, Poroshenko is doing well and will continue to do so, but thank you for your attention. The journalists asked the SBI to update information on the status of the “coal case”, which everyone has forgotten about over the past two years because of the war and the lack of time. The SBI provided them with an answer, but one that requires a good understanding of what it means,” Novikov wrote on his Facebook page,

– novikov wrote on his Facebook page.

He said that in September 2022, after Medvedchuk was exchanged for the Azov men, the SBI wrote a letter that they had completed the investigation and offered to review the materials.

“We replied that they had no right to close the investigation until all our motions were considered, which at that time were numerous and all required a meaningful response. That’s all, nothing else happened over the past year and a half, and in February 2024 there was no news in the case either,”

– Novikov states.

According to him, the SBI has deliberately created a stalemate and is in no hurry to do anything about it.

“Firstly, they cannot legally do so, because when you have already announced the completion of the investigation with unenforced court decisions in hand, you do not have normal procedural tools to fix it. And secondly, and most importantly, our “coal case” is such that the investigation is very reluctant to go to court with it, because all their jams and arbitrariness that have been building up since the beginning of this case will come to light. And for now, it’s still kind of on hold, which is good, especially since the events will be ten years old in December,” Novikov recalled,

– Novikov reminded.

“It will also describe how this case was launched with a high-profile joint briefing in 2020 by the SBU chief Bakanov (where is he now?) and Prosecutor General Venediktova (she is the ambassador to Switzerland). How Venediktova went on leave for a day in December 2021 to avoid signing a suspicion against Poroshenko, and then again in January 2022 to avoid signing an arrest warrant. Just like in February, two weeks before the invasion, they tried to push through the Court of Appeal and still arrest him. How on the first day of the invasion, secret case files were taken to Khmelnytskyi with the SBI leadership and burned there so that they would not get to the enemy (only the files, not the leadership),”

– the lawyer said.

He noted that “having Medvedchuk in custody for five months after his escape attempt and before the exchange, they did not try to convict him of real treason, because all this time they were bargaining with him to testify against Poroshenko on a fictitious story about African coal, and in the end they had to release him without a verdict in the status of a ‘prisoner of war exchange participant’.”

“Tatarov and Smirnov shone in the coordination of the investigation during the full-scale war, when we seemed to have unity in the face of the enemy. And before the invasion, they shone like a Christmas tree on the Maidan. And we have documented evidence of this since the golden days of Portnov, which began in May 2019,”

– Ilya Novikov added.

“The Poroshenko-Medvedchuk coal case

In May 2021, Bihus.Info journalists published the Medvedchuk tapes – more than 30 hours of telephone conversations between 2014 and 2017, conducted by Putin’s godfather and traitor to Ukraine Viktor Medvedchuk with Kremlin officials and L/DNR officials regarding the purchase of coal in ORDLO and control over the Samara-Western Direction oil pipeline. He repeatedly emphasised that he coordinated all issues with the “boss”, who was probably then-President Petro Poroshenko.

on 20 December 2021, Petro Poroshenko was served with a notice of suspicion of treason and assistance to terrorist organisations.

The fifth President of Ukraine is suspected of acting in collusion with a group of people, including representatives of the Russian Federation’s top leadership, to facilitate the activities of the LPR and DPR terrorist organisations.

According to investigators, the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko (who is suspected of secret agreements with the top leadership of the Russian Federation and facilitating the activities of the LPR and DPR), Putin’s godfather Viktor Medvedchuk and former Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn may have participated in the scheme, which cost the state budget of Ukraine about UAH 1.5 billion. The latter two have also already been served with suspicion notices in this case in September-November 2021.

Poroshenko himself pleads not guilty. He has repeatedly called the case against him a persecution of the opposition, and has also claimed that he is being prevented from carrying out his political activities.