The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine acquitted MP Yuriy Kamelchuk and found him innocent. Yuriy Kamelchuk’s interests were defended in court by Andriy Sliusar, a partner at Nazar Kulchytskyy & Partners.

The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine acquitted MP Yuriy Kamelchuk and found him not guilty of making false declarations. Prosecutors of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office accused Yuriy Kamelchuk of failing to include in his declaration for 2020 information about an apartment he rented in Kyiv and a loan to the bank in the amount of almost $49,000.

According to the court’s verdict, the panel of judges stated that Yuriy Kamelchuk rented the apartment to perform his deputy activities and was provided with compensation for its rental costs from the state’s budget. Therefore, the apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine did not only know about the rent of this apartment but also regularly published this information on the official website and newspaper “Voice of Ukraine”.  

The panel also stated that the conviction of the MP for failing to include the apartment, rental costs for which were compensated from the budgetary funds, in his declaration, does not meet the purpose of criminal liability and is formalized. 

Regarding ‘Financial liability’, the judges stated that prosecutors’ evidence did not lead to any actual financial liability that had to be reported in the declaration. Previously, in his indictment, the prosecutor had stated that Yuriy Kamelchuk’s expense transactions in 2017 exceeded his account balance by $16,500, while later the bank added a $32,000 fine to them. 

Yet, the evidence the prosecutor provided clearly demonstrated that after all the transactions, Yuriy Kamelchuk still had $5,75 on his account balance and did not exceed any limits.