On October 26, the HACC found Vitalii Kuts, former head of Trebukhiv Village Council, Brovarskyi district, Kyiv oblast, guilty of attempting to forge documents to transfer 8 hectares of state-owned land into private ownership.

Vitalii Kuts was the head of Trebukhiv Village Council in Brovarskyi district from 2015 to 2020. In the spring of 2017, he gained access to the original decisions of the 6th session of the Trebukhiv Village Council and entered false information regarding permission to transfer 8 hectares of land into private ownership.

Furthermore, he drew up and issued 34 extracts on granting permission to develop land management projects for these plots. To this end, Kuts also forged the signatures of former village council officials and certified the documents with a seal he had access to.

The court qualified Kuts’s actions under Article 366, part 1; Article 15, part 3; Article 364, part 2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. He avoided punishment for forgery in office because the statute of limitation had expired. Regardless, he was sentenced to 3 years in prison, fined UAH 8,500, and barred from holding certain positions for abuse of office.

The defense counsel filed an appeal and a cassation appeal, but both were dismissed. Bohunskyi District Court of the city of Zhytomyr released Vitalii Kuts on parole 11 months and 2 days early.