Mykytas claims no cooperation with NABU was agreed upon

Kyiv real estate developer Maksym Mykytas claimed on Jan.
19 he reached no cooperation agreement with anti-corruption investigators on
offering incriminating testimony against Oleh Tatarov, the deputy head of the
President’s Office. The agreement with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau
(NABU) was falsely alleged by members of the media to have been reached in
exchange for avoiding incarceration, Mykytas said in an interview with the
pravda.com.ua news site. At the same time, he acknowledged that he did testify
against Tatarov, but only in order to establish the crime he committed as his
business partner. Tatarov transferred control of Mykytas’s development company,
Ukrbud, to an individual, Dmytro Fedotenkov, who not only failed to make his
promised investment, but also arranged for the transfer of the company’s
assets, Mykytas alleged. “I don’t believe in a simple coincidence in which such
an experienced lawyer as Tatarov didn’t foresee this,” Mykytas said in the
interview.

Mykytas revealed new crimes involving Tatarov in the
same interview. Namely, Mykytas alleged that Tatarov, as a high-ranking
official in the Internal Affairs Ministry, assisted him in returning funds that
were confiscated from Ukrbud during investigative searches. This was in 2011 –
early 2014, when Tatarov served as the deputy head of the ministry’s main
investigative administration and before he became Mykytas’s business partner.
“On certain conditions, the issue of returning the confiscated funds of Ukrbud
were resolved,” Mykytas said. He also said that he believes that the naming of him
as a suspect in a kidnapping, as announced in late December
by the National Police, was a deliberate provocation against him, ordered by
Tatarov, for his testimony against him.

Zenon Zawada: Members of
the media would not have alleged that Mykytas reached a
cooperation agreement with the NABU had the agency’s investigators not claimed
so themselves. We view this interview as Mykytas’s attempt to let other
influential authorities know that he won’t implicate them in any more
testimonies that he offers authorities. In particular, these could be former
business partners. And they could be backing Tatarov in the current alleged
attempt to apply pressure, in which Mykytas is under house arrest in the
alleged kidnapping case until the end of February. In assuring the others he
won’t expose them, Mykytas is trying to get the kidnapping case dropped and
remove himself from house arrest. At the same time, he is indicating with this
interview that he won’t back down from his claims against Tatarov.

Mykytas’s alleged arrangement with the NABU had the
potential of becoming the first criminal case in which a high-profile suspect
offered incriminating testimony against other high-ranking authorities, leading
to their potential arrest. Mykytas’s apparent denial of that arrangement is an
example of why such cases have been so rare in Ukraine. Even when authorities
are genuinely interested in prosecuting a high-profile criminal case (rather
than “profiting” from it), those in power are able to dissuade witnesses from
cooperation, in this case potentially fabricating a criminal case of
kidnapping. And evading justice is still possible despite the emergence of the
independent anti-corruption institutions (sponsored by the West). In allegedly
fabricating the case and placing Mykytas under arrest, Tatarov could be
protecting other high-profile authorities as well.