In 2016 ILF’s client opened a new line of business - export of sawn timber, and in 2017 he and his staff employees received summons for questioning. The Security Service of Ukraine and National Police opened a criminal case on suspicion of forging documents that were used to obtain permits for the export of goods.

According to the Security Service and the police, our client’s goods appeared out of thin air and his company "allegedly" didn’t purchase neither raw materials nor finished products. The investigators built the case on the testimony of prosecution witnesses – our client’s suppliers.

ILF lawyers Olena Petrova and Andrey Poddymai determined that the suppliers were interviewed without lawyers present and they never received the protocols of the interviews, so their testimonies were twisted to serve the investigation.

For instance, one of the questions for the suppliers was: "Did you prepare the contract with company X?". Since the suppliers themselves do not prepare contracts (meaning they do not print them), they answered truthfully that they "prepared no contracts". The investigators understood this as follows: suppliers signed no contracts and performed no transactions under them.

ILF lawyers collected the necessary evidence (replies to lawyers’ inquiries, documents verifying sales transactions, bank statements from supplier accounts and supplementary questioning of prosecution witnesses) and proved that all transactions were real and backed up with appropriate documents, and the goods were indeed delivered to our client's warehouses.

We manage to prove that our client obtained export permits legally and on the basis of actual documents, and the police closed the criminal case due to the absence of criminal actions on the part of ILF’s client and his employees.