After Unlawful Seizure of Crypto from Media Mogul, Ukrainian Secret Service Under Fire From District Court Judge

Judge I. L. Antipova of the Kyiv district court satisfied a complaint filed by the lawyer for Anatoly Kaplan, the founder of Forklog, the largest Russian-speaking crypto-media outlet.

The complaint was lodged against the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine which failed to pass on plaintiff’s statement of offense into the pre-trial investigation registry in due time.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) is a Ukrainian law enforcement institution which is tasked with investigation and prevention of crimes pertaining to corruption.

According to the court’s statement, the plaintiff contacted NABU concerning a criminal offense committed by SSU (Security Service of Ukraine) on December 19, 2017. NABU was bound by law to process the allegation within 24 hours but failed to do so which forced Forklog’s founder to go to court.

As a result, the court compelled NABU to write in the statement of offense into the pre-trial investigation registry, denying NABU the right to dispute this decision.

In the aforementioned statement of offense, the plaintiff claims that SSU servicemen confiscated his digital wallets storing hefty sums in cryptocurrencies during an illegal search and seizure. Cryptocurrencies were then transferred to different wallets, allegedly controlled by this law enforcement agency.

Earlier in 2018, Kyiv’s Shevchenko district court partially satisfied lawyers’ request pertaining to the return of property seized in Forklog’s office. BTCManager reported on the raid conducted against Forklog in December 2017. The property in question included $13,500 in cash and two all-in-one Dell PCs (which were, in fact, Dell monitors, erroneously tagged as all-in-one PCs by SSU officers).