The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada has passed legislation effectively entitling the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) to autonomously wiretap telephone conversations.
A total of 330 parliamentarians supported bill No. 1009 on amending a number of Ukrainian laws to adjust some provisions of the criminal procedure legislation at the second reading and on the whole at a plenary meeting on Oct. 4.
The bill amends Article 263 of the Criminal Procedure Code, entitling the National Anticorruption Bureau and the SBI to retrieve information from transport telecommunication networks, which effectively entitles them to wiretap.
At the same time, the original version of the bill the parliamentarians considered at the first and second readings additionally included amendments to the law on the parliamentarians’ status, under which law enforcement agencies could search or inspect a parliamentarian’s personal belongings, transport vehicles, housing, or office, examine their correspondence or telephone calls, or put them under covert surveillance if authorized by the prosecutor general rather than the Verkhovna Rada, which is the case now.
When the legislation was submitted to the second reading for the second time, most of the parliamentarians did not support these amendments and left the current procedure of obtaining a sanction to conduct such investigative procedures in relation to parliamentarians.
