The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) is investigating whether the MP Vitaliy Bort forged documents from the banned OPZZh in order to travel abroad.
This is written by the press service of SBI.
The MP and at the same time a member of the Budget Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (VRU — the Ukrainian Parliament) by order of the speaker of the parliament, went to Hungary twice: from April 12 to 14 and from July 3 to 5, 2023.
However, Vitaliy Bort did not return to Ukraine on time, but instead went to Turkey, the USA, Austria, Germany, Italy and France.
In the criminal proceedings on the fact of official forgery (Part 1 of Article 366 of the Criminal Procedure Code), law enforcement officers check whether the peopleʼs deputy provided false information about the term, purpose and country of the business trip.
The day before, "Schemes" published an investigation about the foreign business trips of MPs. According to data on crossing the state border, Vitaliy Bort was not in Ukraine for two months.
During both trips abroad, as the deputy himself indicated in the reports to the parliament, he met with the member of the National Assembly of Hungary Lorinc Nocho, indicating his surname in the documents as "Naksa". They discussed "prospects for the formation of good-neighborly relations" and "the issue of deepening inter-parliamentary cooperation."
СХЕМИ / Радіо свобода
Lorinz Nocho is the deputy leader of the Christian Democratic Peopleʼs Party, which is in a coalition with the ruling Fidesz party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In 2021, Nocho was banned from entering Ukraine for three years — according to media reports, for campaigning for a political party in Transcarpathia during local elections in Ukraine in 2020, which is prohibited by the Election Code of Ukraine.
In his reports to the VRU, Vitaliy Bort did not indicate why he stayed in Hungary longer than he should have. At that time, a ban on the departure of officials without valid reasons was already in force in Ukraine. In general, since the beginning of the year, the border guards have not released 2,100 civil servants who wanted to leave the country without a sufficient reason.
In Resolution No. 69 dated January 27, the government determined that deputies of various levels, government officials, employees who are booked for the period of mobilization and wartime by state authorities, judges, prosecutors, heads of state unitary enterprises, heads of some business associations have the right to cross the state border border on the basis of business trip decisions.
- On December 1, Petro Poroshenko was once again not allowed abroad on a business trip. The first vice-speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Kornienko explained that he canceled the deputyʼs trip after receiving a letter marked "for official use", the content of which he cannot divulge.
- The next day, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) commented on the situation and noted that Russia could use Poroshenkoʼs planned meeting with Viktor Orban, who is known for his pro-Russian position, for provocations in the international arena and a decrease in support for foreign partners. Later, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary Péter Szijártó stated that MP Petro Poroshenko really wanted to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
- Petro Poroshenko himself reported that he was planning a trip to Poland and the USA, where he was to have "dozens of meetings". And the press service of the "European Solidarity" party wrote that SBUʼs publication was false. However, Poroshenko later confirmed that he wanted to meet with Orban.