Profile Committee intends to improve norm of Criminal Code providing for criminal liability for collaboration – Ionushas

KYIV. March 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Parliamentary Committee on Law Enforcement Activities intends to improve the norm of the Criminal Code, which provides for responsibility for collaboration, said head of the committee Serhiy Ionushas (Servant of the People faction).

“We will work either on another version [of the government bill on collaboration], or on a committee bill. In general, the question of collaborators is very sensitive. We understand that some people in the occupied territories are forced to cooperate with the invaders for humanitarian reasons. That is why we want to improve the norms of the Criminal Code, which now provide for criminal liability for such actions,” the press service of the Verkhovna Rada Office quoted Ionushas as saying.

According to him, the version of the draft law on collaboration submitted by the Cabinet of Ministers has no real prospect of passing in parliament, since there are a number of critical comments on it from state bodies.

Ionushas said that currently there is a proposal to use as a working option the possibility of exemption from criminal liability of Ukrainian citizens who were forced to cooperate with the aggressors for humanitarian reasons and voluntarily reported this to the Ukrainian authorities.

He also said that the topic of collaboration was devoted to the recent off-site meeting of the committee in Dnipro, which was attended by heads of law enforcement agencies at both local and state levels.

Ionushas recalled that the profile committee initiated the creation of a working group to study the practice of applying the norms of the Criminal Code on criminal liability for collaboration that have been in force for a year.