Case description
On September 23, 2020, the HACC found lawyer Kostiantyn Lukyanenko guilty of offering the Prosecutor General's Office a bribe of USD 40,000 for assistance in lifting the seizure of part of the company's natural gas. Based on the agreement with the SAPO prosecutor, Lukyanenko was given 5 years of suspended sentence with a probationary period of 3 years.
In autumn 2017, the lawyer tried to make the first contacts with the investigators in the case of LLC Arab Energy Alliance UA to close the proceedings against the employees of this enterprise. It would also help lift the seizure of 25% of natural gas; the profit from its sale was to belong to this LLC.
In December 2017, the lawyer offered Kostiantyn Kulyk, the prosecutor of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, a bribe of USD 35,000, which the latter refused. Subsequently, in April 2018, the lawyer offered USD 40,000. The case did not go further, and two years later, Lukyanenko decided to conclude an agreement with the SAPO prosecutor, telling all the circumstances of the events.
The crime was qualified under Art. 369, part 3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Lukyanenko was sentenced to 5 years in prison. However, since he had previously concluded a plea agreement, the HACC approved it and sentenced him to 5 years of suspended imprisonment with a probationary period of 3 years.
Judge Tkachenko, who was a member of the panel, disagreed with the position of fellow judges and expressed a separate opinion, in which he indicated that the court should have refused to approve the agreement.
Interestingly, the criminal proceedings against Lukyanenko continued with the documentation of Oleksii Tamrazov, former deputy head of Ukrgasvydobuvannya. The latter, like Lukyanenko, wanted to assist in his own interests for a bribe to lift the seizure of natural gas, which was evidence in the case of the criminal organization of Yanukovych and Kurchenko. Therefore, Tamrazov is accused of allegedly transferring USD 100,000 to prosecutor Kulyk.
