Kyiv court refuses to consider in absentia the case of Odesa resident who owns a castle in France

Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv returned the indictment against Dmytro Malynovskyi to the prosecutor.

This is reported by the Court Reporter publication with reference to the ruling of August 29.

In 2018, the French police and Europol detained Dmytro Malynovskyi, who had been accused of fraud on a large scale in his home country since 2012. According to the investigation, Malinowski and his partner fraudulently seized the corporate rights of a company that owned a building in Odesa using forged documents.

Malinowski was tried, but in 2014 he failed to appear at a court hearing and simply disappeared. Subsequently, the concierge handed his wife a box of ashes delivered by a stranger and a document about her husband's death in occupied Luhansk. At the suit of his wife, the court declared Malinowski dead on the basis of this parcel with ashes.

However, it turned out that the man was actually alive and living in France. The local police noticed suspicious transactions related to the purchase of the castle for 3 million euros by a Luxembourg company whose main owner was a Ukrainian citizen, Dmytro Malynovskyi. French law enforcement officers learned that the man had been prosecuted in his home country for large-scale fraud and managed to avoid justice thanks to a fake death certificate. In total, Malinowski's property worth more than 4.6 million euros was seized in France, including a castle, a vintage Rolls Royce Phantom and three works of art by Salvador Dali.

The Odesa resident was detained and held under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in Nancy (France). In September 2018, the Ukrainian prosecutor's office sent a request for Malinowski's extradition. But since then, he has not returned to Ukraine. In 2023, the prosecutor's office sent a new indictment against Malinowski in absentia for fraud and money laundering.

The preparatory hearing in the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv lasted more than two years. Prosecutors requested that the trial be held in a special court proceeding, i.e. in the absence of the accused.

Although Malinowski himself participated in the trial via video link and objected to the trial in absentia. The defendant explained that he has been living in France for a long time and first learned about this criminal proceeding in 2018. But today he cannot come to Ukraine, as he is also on trial in France and therefore has no right to legally leave the country.

As a result, the court was convinced that the prosecutor was aware of the defendant's whereabouts and that he was not hiding to evade criminal liability. Consequently, the indictment cannot be considered to have been drawn up in accordance with the requirements of the law and, as the court decided, must be returned to the prosecutor.

Кирило Бойко