Six months have elapsed, and law enforcement officers are still assessing the delivery of a draft notice to a journalist because of Slidstvo.Info‘s investigation into the assets of Security Service of Ukraine General Illia Vityuk. The journalist’s lawyer, Oksana Maksymeniuk, states that four months is sufficient time to serve a notice of suspicion. Such a delay may indicate that there will be no verdict.
Earlier, Slidstvo.Info uncovered elite real estate worth at least UAH 25.5 million belonging to the SSU official’s family, including a premium apartment valued at UAH 21.5 million. A few days before the publication of the investigation, employees of the Solomianskyi Territorial Military Recruitment Centre approached the journalist and attempted to serve him with a draft notice. According to Slidstvo.Info, the military personnel may have been instructed by an employee of the SSU’s cybersecurity department, in an apparent attempt to punish the investigator who exposed Vitiuk’s luxury property.
‘Within the framework of the said criminal proceedings, we are assessing the circumstances of a possible illegal attempt to serve a notice to the person named in the request. The individual in question perceived this as an obstruction to his legitimate journalistic activities, related to the preparation of a story about an SSU employee. During the pre-trial investigation, the aforementioned person (journalist Yevhen Shulhat – ed.) was interrogated as a victim. No decisions have been made in accordance with Articles 276-278 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine. The pre-trial investigation is ongoing,’ the State Bureau of Investigation said in response to a request from Slidstvo.Info.
Lawyer Oksana Maksymeniuk, who represents Shulhat in this case, says that in her experience, four months is sufficient for the investigation to serve a notice of suspicion, and that a protracted pre-trial investigation often does not lead to convictions: ‘We are unaware of any progress in the case, apart from Yevhen being interrogated at the end of April 2024. The investigation has not reported any other actions. From my experience, I can say that for an effective investigation, four months is enough to serve a suspicion. However, as we can see from the large number of cases under pre-trial investigation, this is not being done. Excessive pre-trial investigation time usually does not lead to convictions.’
As a reminder, the National Agency for Corruption Prevention launched an investigation into the lifestyle of SSU Brigadier General Vitiuk in April 2024 following the publication of the Slidstvo.Info investigation. In September, law enforcement officers reported that they had found no discrepancies between the declared and actual living standards of Illia Vitiuk.
The journalists discovered that in December 2023, Illia Vitiuk’s wife purchased a 195 sq m apartment in a premium residential complex in the capital. The market value of this apartment is UAH 21.5 million.
Moreover, shortly after Vitiuk’s appointment as head of the SSU’s Cyber Security Department, his wife registered as a self-employed person and began receiving significant income. In 2022, the woman earned UAH 9.4 million and UAH 13.4 million in 2023.
The official’s mother, who works as a doctor, also owns real estate in Kyiv residential complexes. The market value of the apartments at the exchange rate at the time of purchase was over UAH 4 million.
A few days before the publication of the investigation into the property of SSU General Ilya Vityuk’s family, Slidstvo.Info journalist Yevhen Shulhat was approached by employees of the Solomianskyi Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centre who attempted to serve him with a draft notice. As Slidstvo.Info discovered, the instructions to serve the notice could have been given by an employee of the SSU’s cybersecurity department, in an apparent attempt to punish the investigator who had exposed Vitiuk’s luxury property.
Subsequently, Slidstvo.Info investigator Yevhen Shulhat and lawyer Oksana Maksymeniuk filed a complaint with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) about the incident involving the Territorial Recruitment Centre employees serving the journalist with the draft notice.
The General Staff announced that they had transferred the head of the Solomianskyi Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centre to a lower position in one of the Armed Forces’ combat units. Concurrently, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) suspended Ilia Vityuk, the head of the Cyber Security Department, from his duties. The SSU also reported that it had deployed Vitiuk to perform combat missions at the front. On 1 May, President Zelensky dismissed Ilya Vitiuk from his post as head of the Department.
However, Illia Vitiuk was recently spotted at an event dedicated to the development of electronic warfare in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A photo of Vitiuk wearing an embroidered shirt was posted on Facebook by one of the event participants. When a scandal erupted around the photo, the post was deleted.
Slidstvo.Info journalists also discovered that SSU General Vitiuk, as an operative of the service, had filmed the shootings on Maidan by Berkut. This information was confirmed to Slidstvo.Info by the Prosecutor General’s Office, as well as by Serhiy Horbatiuk, the former head of the Maidan Crimes Investigation Department. The video was later removed from the internet.
In response to a request from Slidstvo.Info, the Security Service of Ukraine stated that currently, Illia Vitiuk ‘does not hold any staff positions in the SSU, remains a serviceman in accordance with the law and fulfils his duty to protect the state, in particular, performs tasks related to countering the enemy with the help of unmanned systems’.
The video has English subtitles.
