Ilya Kiva Sat in Pretrial Detention and Has a Certificate from a Psychiatric Clinic: Bihus.info Investigation

A former adviser to Arsen Avakov, now an MP from the Opposition Platform, has a rich past.

People's Deputy Ilya Kiva was convicted in a bribery case but received a fine instead of prison due to mitigating circumstances: a second-group disability certificate and mental disorders. Journalist Danylo Mokryk reported this in an investigation on the channel Bihus.info.

Mokryk studied the court verdict against Kiva and found that in 2011 the People's Deputy worked as deputy head of the Consumer Rights Protection Department. The court decision shows that while Kiva held this post, criminal intent arose and a corruption scheme was created. According to the scheme, the department inspected a jewelry store, found violations and issued a fine of around $23,000. Later, the businessman was offered to pay a $1,500 bribe instead of the $23,000 fine. The businessman went to the police. On September 27, 2011, Ilya Kiva was detained at a restaurant in Poltava, as was his brother, who had been collecting money for Kiva as an intermediary. 

On December 24, 2013, the court in Poltava found Ilya Kiva guilty and imposed a fine of 600 times the untaxed minimum income of citizens. One of the mitigating circumstances was a disability certificate obtained “as a result of suffered craniocerebral injuries with personality psychopathization.” Kiva was undergoing treatment at the Poltava Regional Psychiatric Hospital. 

Ilya Kiva admitted his guilt and did not contest the verdict in the appeal court. The journalist links this to the lenient sentence. Later, one of the police officers said he had not seen the brother of Ilya Kiva receive the money, which led to the verdict being reviewed and the bribery case being reclassified as “abuse of influence.” As a result, in August 2014 Ilya Kiva was granted an amnesty. He again admitted guilt in court and cited ignorance of the law. His criminal record was expunged. 

Prosecutors appealed the court decision, but later Deputy Prosecutor of Poltava Region Anatoly Kovalchuk withdrew the appeal. In a conversation with journalist Mokryk, Kovalchuk cited an order from superiors and violations in the document. Yan Strelnyk, who was the Poltava Region prosecutor at the time, told the journalist that he could not recall the events of 2014 from memory. 

Prosecutor Andriy Myronov refused to speak with the journalist, saying he did not want to recall this story. The victim in the case refused to communicate with the journalist, stating that he had already suffered from that situation. Prosecutor Maryna Chychil also declined to comment.  

In September 2014, Kiva was appointed head of the police battalion “Poltavshchyna,” but due to dissatisfaction among the battalion members, he remained in the role of battalion commander for only several weeks. Police officers serving in the battalion said they would not serve under the leadership of a convicted person; moreover, some of them had taken part in the “development” of Kiva as a suspect. Ilya Kiva was transferred to the position of deputy head of the Donetsk police department. 

As Kiva himself told Natalia Vlashchenko in an interview, he received the post at the Consumer Rights Protection Department because he had become “inconvenient” for the leadership of the Poltava UBOP (Department for Combating Organized Crime). The deputy calls the bribery case a fabrication resulting from a conflict with the UBOP head: Ilya Kiva was tasked with paying $10,000 a month “for maintenance” of the UBOP. The MP claims he refused and was warned of the consequences. 

Kiva also said that his confession was obtained through torture, blackmail and pressure on his pregnant wife: the MP was threatened that his wife could be detained for 72 hours. The People's Deputy says this was one of the hardest periods of his life and claims that his epileptic seizures began after the torture in pretrial detention and “two months of hell.”

In 2013, according to Kiva, he underwent a medical examination and was found to be healthy. Ilya Kiva stated that he is awaiting a decision from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on his case, which he expects will put a legal full stop to the matter. 

Journalist Danylo Mokryk points out that, in addition to epilepsy, the court decisions also cite “personality psychopathization,” and that court decisions taking into account the defendant's health were issued in 2014, which means either Ilya Kiva is not telling the full story about the medical examination, or there is an error in the court decision. T

Also, Mokryk claims that Kiva did not appeal the verdict and therefore could not apply to the ECHR as the last instance. According to the journalist, he sent requests to the People's Deputy and his assistant asking for the registration number of the ECHR complaint, but received no response. Sources of the journalist at the Ministry of Justice said they had no knowledge of the existence of such a claim.