In 2023 no one was notified of suspicion of crimes against lawyers

In 2023 the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations registered 167 crimes committed against lawyers. During the same period, only five proceedings were considered in court. At the same time, only one case resulted in a verdict. The rest were closed.

Such statistical data were provided by the Office of the Prosecutor General and the State Judicial Administration at the request of the UNBA Committee on Protection of Advocates' Rights and Guarantees of Practice of Law.

We are talking about such crimes against a defense counsel or representative of a person as:

• interference with activities (Article 397 of the CC)
• threat or violence (Article 398 of the Criminal Code);
• intentional destruction or damage to property (Article 399 of the CC);
• attempt on life in connection with activities related to the provision of legal aid (Article 400 of the Criminal Code).

Thus, the Prosecutor General's Office provided information on the number of registered proceedings under these articles and the results of their investigation in accordance with the reporting in Form 1 "Unified Report on Criminal Offenses".

It turned out that 167 criminal offenses were registered in 2023. At the same time, no one was notified of suspicion. Also, no proceedings were brought to court with an indictment. At the same time, 67 cases were closed.

At the same time, according to the SJAU, 13 criminal cases were pending in the courts. Of these, 5 proceedings were considered. One of them resulted in a verdict, and four were closed. At the end of 2023, there were eight pending proceedings in the courts of Ukraine.

«We know how difficult it can be to enter information into the URPTI. Law enforcers try not to do it at any cost in order not to spoil their statistics. Especially when it comes to crimes committed by their colleagues against us as procedural opponents in criminal cases. So those offenses against lawyers that were registered must have had convincing evidence. But the correlation between the number of registered proceedings and the zero rates of serving suspicions and submitting materials to the court is striking, - says Yevheniy Solodko, Chairman of the UNBA Committee on Protection of Advocates' Rights and Guarantees of Legal Practice. - In fact, this is proof that the state, represented by law enforcement agencies, is sabotaging the consideration of crimes committed against lawyers. We believe that advocates are undesirable participants in the justice system, especially in criminal justice, and the above statistics clearly illustrate this».