UNBA proposes to provide in the CPC a specific term for serving a notice of suspicion

The term of service of a notice of suspicion should clearly be defined in the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine in order to prevent restriction of human rights arising from a temporal uncertainty of this procedure in the legislation.

The relevant draft law was prepared by the UNBA Committee for legislative initiatives in advocacy.

Thus, it is proposed to provide in para. 1 of Article 276 CPC ("Cases of serving a notice of suspicion") that a notice of suspicion is served no later than six months after the entry of data in the Unified Register of pre-trial investigations. If a notice is not served during this term, a prosecutor or investigating judge are obliged to discontinue the proceedings on the grounds of Articles 283, 284 CPC.

In the exceptional cases, the period of serving a written notice of suspicion may be extended by an investigating judge up to 12 months.

The drafters of this legislative change refer to the position of the European Court of Human Rights, which has repeatedly stressed on the need to respect the reasonable time requirement during the criminal proceedings.

As to the Ukrainian legislation, the CPC declares that all procedural actions or decisions should be taken within a reasonable time. However, the practice of application of the CPC demonstrates that the pre-trial investigation authorities, being aware of the shortcomings of the law, ignore the reasonable time requirement for serving a notice of suspicion.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of citizens of Ukraine, in respect of whom information was included into the Unified Register of pre-trial investigations, face restriction of their rights for an indefinite period of time, since after the entry of such information into the URPTI in respect of certain individuals or “following the fact”, investigative actions (including searches) may be conducted, written correspondence is controlled, and other rights may be limited.

"All this period of time, before a notice of suspicion is served, a person does not have procedural status and cannot defend herself. In this way, a right to defence gets limited", considers Mr Yaroslav Zeykan, Head of the UNBA Committee on legislative initiatives in advocacy.

Typically, such cases are registered on the basis of reports about direct detection of crimes, but these reports do not contain sufficient factual evidence that would indicate to a crime. Notices of suspicion are not served and, as a result, citizens cannot enjoy such rights as a right to question witnesses for the prosecution, to demand that they be questioned, to demand the attendance by, and examination of, witnesses for the defence under the same conditions as witnesses for the prosecution. "Under these conditions, entry of information to URPTI is perceived by our citizens as a pressure on them in order to induce them to make contributions to charity foundations of the police and State Security Service or to the acts of corruption", - explains advocate Zeykan.

Full text of the document can found in Ukrainian here.

Suggestions and/or comments to the draft amendments to the CPC can be sent by e-mail to: a.gumenyuk@unba.org.ua; contact person - Anzhela Gumenyuk.