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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
🔈 Former Deputy Head of the Office of the President Iryna Mudra was taken into custody for 60 days with the possibility of bail set at 20 million UAH.
The SAP prosecutor requested bail of 150 million UAH. Mudra’s defense is being handled by Massi Nayem — founder of the law firm "Miller."
🚫 25 April 2018, in an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda the lawyer categorically stated that among those he would never defend in court are people accused of corruption.
“I would definitely never take on cases where the law is manipulated to steal budget funds. Never.”
Now, justifying Mudra’s defense, the lawyer rejects the charge that this is a double standard.
“For some people the answer is obvious: if you can, then your previous words contained double standards. I understand that logic, but I disagree with that conclusion <…> In fourteen years of work, among our clients have been people I personally wouldn’t have invited to dinner. That does not deprive them of the right to a defense and does not make me their like-minded supporter,” Nayem said.
It is worth noting that Nayem’s law firm is not defending a figure in a corruption case for the first time, despite the lawyer’s public anti-corruption reputation. In June 2023 the firm "Miller" undertook the defense of UAF president Andriy Pavelko, who was suspected of embezzling UEFA funds allocated for building an artificial turf factory in Ukraine. At that time Nayem also faced a flurry of criticism and admitted he felt “for a second like some kind of devil,” although he later clarified that he was not personally the lawyer in that case.
Before the scandal over Mudra’s defense, Nayem was a member of the supervisory board of fraudster Serhiy Sternenko’s foundation, but after the outcry he resigned.
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