The Supreme Court of Criminal Appeals convicted a lawyer for attempting to bribe SAPO prosecutors: he offered $200,000 to change the subject matter of the case.

The Supreme Anti-Corruption Court found a Ukrainian lawyer guilty of attempting to bribe prosecutors of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. This involved offering an illegal benefit of $200,000 for transferring the criminal case to another pre-trial investigation body.

As reported by the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court, the court passed a guilty verdict in the bribery case and sentenced the lawyer to 4 years and 6 months in prison. The court also ordered the confiscation of $100,000. The verdict has not yet entered into force and may be appealed.

According to the investigation, the lawyer offered SAPO prosecutors money for changing the qualification of the criminal case and its subsequent transfer to the National Police, an agency that is not subject to NABU investigation. In this way, the defense tried to remove the case from the jurisdiction of anti-corruption bodies.

As noted in the case materials, this is a former partner of a well-known law firm, Oleksiy Nosov. At the time of the events, he was representing the interests of a high-ranking official in a case of embezzlement of electricity and legalization of funds received from its sale.

The investigation established that the lawyer tried to act as conspiratorially as possible: he deleted correspondence, refused to provide access to the phone, and avoided direct answers about the amount of the bribe. Law enforcement officers learned about the attempted bribery from an intermediary through whom the funds were planned to be transferred.

In court, the defense insisted that the lawyer did not discuss the issue of the bribe with his client, and also claimed an alleged provocation by law enforcement agencies. At the same time, the Supreme Court of Justice recognized the evidence provided as sufficient for a guilty verdict.

Recall that recently, anti-corruption agencies have been actively investigating cases of high-ranking corruption in the judicial and law enforcement systems. In particular, recently, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Vsevolod Knyazev also pleaded guilty in the case of receiving illegal benefits and entered into a plea agreement with the investigation.