Court imposes a personal commitment on anti-corruption activist Shabunin as a preventive measure

Kyiv Pecherskyi Court imposes a preventive measure on the head of the NGO Anti-Corruption Action Center Vitaliy Shabunin – the activist was assigned a personal commitment, transmits media Graty.

The judge fully granted the prosecutors' request – Shabunin must stay at the location of his unit in Kharkiv region, not communicate with his ex-combatant Viktor Yushko and employees of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, including former ones, and not visit the agency's building in Kyiv. The activist also has to hand over his passport.

The measure will remain in place until August 20, writes Public. Initially, prosecutors requested that Shabunin be required to wear an electronic bracelet, but later changed the request.

The defendant's lawyer asked for the recusal of judge Svitlana Hrechana, who was presiding over the hearing, as she might be biased: Shabunin's organization had published critical materials about the official. However, the court refused to recuse her.

Shabunin is suspected of service evasion and fraud. State Bureau of Investigation statesthe activist did not report to his place of service for a long time after mobilization in 2022 and stayed in civilian institutions under the guise of business trips. From September 2022 to February 2023, Shabunin was on a business trip to the NACP, which was approved by his then-commander Yushko.

Law enforcement officers also claim that the activist received a monthly allowance of more than UAH 50,000, although he was actually absent from the military unit, and illegally used an SUV imported to Ukraine as humanitarian aid for the needs of the army.

Shabunin and the AntAC denied these accusations. Earlier, the AntAC stated that the searches at Shabunin's place were a wave of attacks on the organization and its head because of his criticism of the Presidential Office and its head personally Andriy Yermak. Shabunin himself accused president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and called the actions of law enforcement officers illegal.

So far, the authorities have not responded to these statements, and law enforcement officials claim that the suspicion is not related to the activist's professional activities.

On the day of the trial, the ZMINA Human Rights Center published a joint statement with 68 organizations: it addressed the President and the Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko and SBI Director Oleksiy Sukhachov with a demand to "prevent the use of the justice system for political reprisals and persecution of critics of the government."

• In a conversation with LIGA.net in June, Shabunin criticized the candidacy of the new Prosecutor General Kravchenko and said that President Zelensky "once again relies on loyalty instead of professionalism".
• The activist and the AntAC also spoke with criticizing the work of the Defense Procurement Agency of the Ministry of Defense.