Kropyvnytskyi court rejects motion to recuse prosecutor
On December 17, the Fortechny District Court of Kropyvnytskyi considered a case of official forgery and embezzlement of budget funds for heating educational institutions in the amount of three million 200 thousand hryvnias. Among the suspects is the head of the education department of the Kropyvnytskyi City Council. Three more suspects asked not to show their faces and not to give their surnames. This is an employee of the education department and the head of two private enterprises that provided thermal modernization services. Suspilne writes about this.
The entrepreneurs' lawyers requested the prosecutor's disqualification.
The defense believes that the prosecutor is biased in these proceedings, continuing to fail to comply with the norms
Prosecutor Iryna Kucherenko denied the claim of bias and recusal during the hearing. According to her, from 2019 to 2024, the suspects provided false information, overstating the indicators of the achieved level of actual savings in the documents. At a time when educational institutions were not working due to the coronavirus and martial law, the amount of electricity consumed and the amount of payments were artificially increased. Officials signed official documents with fictitious data. The punishment under the article on misappropriation of property is from 7 to 12 years of imprisonment.
We are a little stressed by these manipulative techniques. It's as if we are trying to live by the law, but we don't see from the prosecutor's office that the actions are being carried out in accordance with the law. We are not guilty of anything absolutely, far-fetched, untrue, incompetent. We will prove
The head of the education department, Larysa Kostenko, disagrees with the accusations. She said that, on the contrary, she is implementing energy independence measures.
At the investor's expense, insulation, thermal modernization, and most importantly, management of energy service activities were carried out, because it is impossible to simply modernize a building without energy service services - the building does not know whether it is insulated or not. Today, there are already tangible results from the implementation of these energy service agreements. If we consider the objects that are currently being considered in court, then in four years we saved and left two million hryvnias in the budget. This is the money that remained in the budget as part of the implemented measures and savings on heat. This is almost 4 thousand gigacalories. For all energy service objects, of which we have 14, we have already left 13 million hryvnias in the budget
According to Larisa Kostenko, the prosecutor's office is putting pressure on her with this case.
Law enforcement agencies, of which we have many, still haven't figured out how the energy service works. They are studying it, going to institutions, conducting interrogations, and they are interrogating me. I perceive this as persecution.
Judge Ruslan Burko rejected the lawyers' motion.
The court rejects the application to disqualify the prosecutor due to their unfoundedness.
The meeting was adjourned until January 15. The prosecutor declined to make any additional comments after the meeting.
Larisa Kostenko is a figurehead of the EBK base.
It was previously reported that officials in Kropyvnytskyi are suspected of embezzling the budget.
