The Prosecutor Generalʼs Office started the proceedings due to an attempt to serve a subpoena on the Slidstvo.Info journalist, who conducted an investigation into the head of the cyber security department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Ilya Vityuk.
This was reported by the press service of the Ukrainian Communist Party on April 8.
Law enforcement officers entered information into the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations, Part 1 of Art. 364 (abuse of official powers) and Part 3 of Art. 171 (obstructing the professional activity of journalists) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
The pre-trial investigation was entrusted to the Main Investigative Department of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI).
What preceded
Slidstvo.Info investigative journalist Yevhen Shulhat published an investigation into the fact that the wife of the head of the SBU cyber security department, Ilya Vityuk, bought an apartment in the capitalʼs premium residential complex in December 2023. The officialʼs declaration states that 12.8 million hryvnias were paid for the apartment, although its market value is more than 20 million.
Slidstvo.Info says that Vityukʼs official earnings for this apartment would not be enough. At the same time, his wife Yulia started doing business shortly after her husband was appointed to this position. SBU assured that her earnings are enough for the purchased real estate.
After that, the Agency for Journalistic Investigations stated that representatives of the Military Commissariat tried to serve a subpoena on their journalist Shulgat on the instructions of the SBU employee. In this way, the special services allegedly wanted to "punish" the investigator.
The head of the committee on freedom of speech Yaroslav Yurchyshyn discussed with the head of the SBU Vasyl Malyuk the situation with the subpoena to the journalist after his work on the investigation of the head of the cyber security department of the special service Ilya Vityuk.