Administrative offense case due to late declaration submission closed

Attorney-at-law Maryna Mkrtycheva defended a former NABU detective who had submitted a declaration one day late. The NACP, the Department of Strategic Investigations of the National Police of Ukraine, the GPO prosecutor and the judge tried for almost 3 years to illegally bring to administrative responsibility with procedural violations.

In the case, the administrative offense report was filed outside the 6-month period for imposing an administrative penalty and outside the 24-hour period for drawing up the report and was not delivered to the client. After the administrative offense report was received by the court, the judge scheduled court hearings on the case for 2 years and never summoned the client to participate in court hearings, unreasonably issued rulings on the reason and suspension of proceedings on the case. Such biased behavior of the lower court resulted not only in ignoring legal requirements to dismiss the administrative offense case without justification, but also in issuing a ruling on recognizing the client as guilty of committing an administrative offense due to the fact of the untimely declaration submission by a person without valid reason (Part 1 of Article 172-6 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).

Disagreeing with the lower court's decision, the attorney-at-law appealed the ruling to the court of appeal. The court of appeal, after reviewing the arguments and heard the legal position, agreed with the defense. As a result, the lower court's ruling was overturned, and the case of an administrative offense was closed without establishing guilt.