The HACC continues to weigh the preventive measure for Serhii Kropyva; the floor has passed to the defense.
His lawyers insist the suspicion is unfounded and that the preventive measure the prosecutor proposes for Kropyva is excessively harsh.
The lawyer also stressed that no suspect has been served a notice of suspicion under Article 368 of the Criminal Code — meaning there is no predicate offense.
The defense maintains that the circumstances of the case show no signs of a criminal organization. By the information available, the lawyer noted, only four people have been served suspicion — too few to establish a criminal organization.
The lawyer dwelt separately on the account of Kropyva's detention. Claims had spread online and in the media that Kropyva was supposedly detained in Lviv while heading toward the state border. That, the lawyer says, is a fake and wholly untrue. Investigators, he insists, found on Kropyva no foreign-travel passport or any documents that could have helped him cross the border. The defense also has information that Kropyva was in Lviv on an official work trip and, at the moment of his detention, was in the city center.
The defense likewise called the risks the prosecutor outlined baseless. Counsel is confident that Kropyva has neither destroyed documents nor unlawfully influenced witnesses, nor taken any other action that could pose a risk to the proceedings — and will not do so.
The defense calls the UAH 200 million bail proposed by the prosecutor disproportionate to Kropyva's means — 25 times his declared income, by the lawyer's account. On that basis, counsel argues, the UAH 200 million bail does not meet the alternativeness criterion and cannot be applied to the suspect; the prosecutor's motion for such a preventive measure should be denied.
Kropyva himself said he had no intent to flee, with his whole family in Ukraine. Many of his words, he argued, were presented by the investigation as “taken out of context,” when they were in fact “words said in jest,” “Odesa lexicon.” He stated firmly that he does not admit guilt, adding that he is ready to post bail commensurate with his income — UAH 2 million.
The court has now retired to the deliberation room to reach its decision.
