Last year, the newspaper "Volyn" wrote about the persecution suffered by Volodymyr Kostsovyat, executive director of OJSC "Kovel Furniture Combine," at the hands of regulatory bodies and the local prosecutor's office. The essence of the case was that the tax police applied substantial penalties to the enterprise for the independent alienation of assets that were allegedly under pledge. Without clarifying all the circumstances, Deputy Kovel Interdistrict Prosecutor Oleksandr Borshch initiated a criminal case against the executive director, accusing him of abuse of office that caused grave consequences.
Seeing the futility of a clearly contrived criminal case, the prosecutor's office tried to close it on exonerating grounds, but Volodymyr Kostsovyat refused to accept such a "compromise," since he had not violated the law. (Incidentally, after "Volyn's" critical article about the persecution and intimidation of the furniture combine's director, the latter was attacked, and it is unknown how it all would have ended had it not been for the help of a friend who was walking together with Volodymyr Kostsovyat.)
And now, by a verdict of the Kovel City and District Court, Volodymyr Kostsovyat was acquitted of the crime imputed to him by the prosecutor's office due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions. During the trial, presiding judge Vasyl Oksentyuk established that the unlawful performance by employees of the Kovel Unified State Tax Inspectorate of their official duties became the basis for initiating a criminal case against the executive director of the furniture combine and unlawfully bringing him to criminal liability. A separate court ruling states that the head of the Kovel Unified State Tax Inspectorate, Andriy Tymeichuk, should take measures against the guilty persons.
Yaroslav HAVRYLYUK