A comprehensive legal analysis of unfounded suspicion is presented.
Other groundless criminal proceedings against the Ukrainian Association of Football (UAF) and its leadership are gaining momentum. This war of investigative bodies against Ukrainian football has been in progress for 4 years. It`s about “the Pavelko`s Football Plant Case”, which was registered by National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) back in 2018.
Like other proceedings, this case is filled with numerous inconsistencies, forgeries and obvious violations. And therefore, it has no legal perspective!
Three years of investigations, thousands of hours of work, searches, interrogations, international legal assignments to the UAE, Germany, Denmark, the UK, and Switzerland have been completed. As a result – the NABU detectives concluded that Andriy Pavelko, the Head of the Association, had done nothing illegal. The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office confirmed this with its resolution in September 2021. The case was handed over to the police.
However, we have a newsbreak. On November 22, nearly a year after all investigations were completed, Pavelko was served with the notice of suspicion. And this happened despite the fact that there are no new circumstances in the case!
We link the investigative activity with the upcoming elections to the UEFA Executive Committee, which are scheduled for April 2023. Also, we find out similarities with the previous activity of law enforcement officers in 2018 before the coming elections to the UEFA Executive Committee in 2019.
And what are the circumstances of the case and the charges?
UAF built a modern plant for producing artificial turf. It was needed to expand the country’s sports infrastructure – thousands of football fields. In order to build the plant the optimization of the process of purchasing compatible equipment from suppliers from various continents, its delivery, and installation was required.
To coordinate all processes, the Association engaged the SDT engineering company. This company was recommended to the UAF by the representative of the well-known German manufacturer of artificial turf – Polytan. It is confirmed by an official letter from Polytan.
For the performance of works and services, the plant transferred a prepayment to SDT’s account. However, following the completion of all processes, there were unused funds. The Association decided to use it for its intended needs, namely to pay the obligations towards the famous Italian referee Pierluigi Collina. He was the curator of the refereeing system in professional football in Ukraine.
According to the plant’s instructions, the money was transferred from SDT to Mr. Collina via its own counterparty – Softex. This is confirmed by payment orders and economic assessment.
This settlement procedure is a worldwide practice and is common in the business world between private legal entities such as the Association.
Everything is lawful. However, prosecutors ignore such transfer and claim that the funds have been “stolen.”
This case cannot be about any laundering or embezzlement of “budget funds”, since neither the UAF nor the Plant have ever received budget subsidies for the construction or the activity!
Manipulation of prosecutors
- The prosecutor “forgot” to mention the abovesaid transfer of funds to the Italian referee P. Collina in accordance with the contract and to submit the document to the court. Instead, the investigation claims that the funds were misappropriated by UAF officials (Article 191 of the Criminal Code).
- The prosecutor did not carry out a damage assessment. It is a mandatory requirement in this category of cases. But this is not surprising, because the expert wouldn`t have anything to prove. The reason – the Association, which is the owner of these funds, did not suffer any damage. The funds were used for the target needs of the Association and for tasks of Ukrainian football.
- The prosecutor falsified the materials of undercover investigative actions. He used the materials published on the Internet as evidence (allegedly revealing the e-mail accounts of UAF officials). The State Bureau of Investigation has already started criminal proceedings regarding these facts.
We’ll show the court that this case against the UAF, like everything else, has no legal perspective. Another thing is the cases concerning those who were involved in the falsification of materials of criminal proceedings!
