In Yavoriv district, the head of a local civic organisation has been convicted of extorting an unlawful benefit from an entrepreneur and smuggling precursors into the country. This was reported by the Yavoriv District Prosecutor’s Office.
In court, prosecutors proved the man guilty of demanding and receiving 30,000 UAH from the head of a construction company in return for removing negative posts on Facebook (Part 4 of Article 368-3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The posts concerned the construction of a clinic in one of the settlements of Yavoriv district and the involvement in this work of the director’s wife as a sole trader.
After the posts appeared, the head of the civic organisation met the company’s director and proposed a “deal”: for 30,000 UAH the posts would be deleted. The entrepreneur contacted law enforcement and subsequently acted under their supervision. In June 2019, the man was detained under Article 208 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine immediately after receiving the full agreed amount.
During the trial in this case, the defendant committed a new offence – he attempted to smuggle precursors into the country (Part 3 of Article 305 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). In 2021, when entering from the Republic of Poland, more than 2,500 tablets (210 blister packs) of a medicine containing pseudoephedrine were found in his car. The packets of medicine had been packed into nylon tights and hidden in the passenger compartment: under the passenger floor mat, in the doors, in a compartment under the steering wheel and in the air conditioning system.
As the medicine contains a precursor, its import is permitted only with a prescription and in limited quantities, whereas the man transported it covertly and in a large volume. In December 2024, the court of first instance sentenced him for smuggling tablets containing pseudoephedrine to 10 years and 6 months’ imprisonment, with confiscation of property and disqualification from holding certain positions for a period of 3 years. In March this year, the Supreme Court upheld this sentence.
In July, the Yavoriv court delivered its verdict in the proceedings concerning the extortion of an unlawful benefit from the head of the construction company, sentencing the head of the civic organisation to 4 years’ imprisonment with disqualification from holding certain positions for a period of 3 years. The final sentence for the aggregate of offences is 10 years and 9 months’ imprisonment, with disqualification from holding positions related to the performance of administrative and economic functions for a period of 3 years, and with confiscation of all property. The convicted man is in custody and is serving the sentence imposed by the court.