Director of KSRIFE Oleksandr Ruvin provided a fake certificate to obtain the status of a combatant

Director of KSRIFE Oleksandr Ruvin provided a fake certificate to obtain the status of a combatant

The Director of the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise, Oleksandr Ruvin, provided a forged certificate for the badge «For Demining», on the basis of which he obtained the status of a combatant and a war veteran’s certificate.

This was reported by Nadiya Savchenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada of the VIII convocation, who published the relevant documents on Facebook.

In August 2020, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) registered a criminal proceeding on the fact of fraud committed on an especially large scale by the Director of the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise under the Ministry of Justice, Oleksandr Ruvin.

The pre-trial investigation was initiated based on a statement by the former Chief of the General Staff, Volodymyr Zamana. It is reported that in 1996, Ruvin forged a certificate for the badge «For Demining», with which he was allegedly awarded based on an order of the Minister of Defence of the USSR in May 1989.

Ruvin submitted this forged document to the commission of the Carpathian Military District in August 1996 and, on its basis, obtained the status of a combatant and a war veteran’s certificate. In reality, no such order existed, which has been documented by responses from archival institutions.

Subsequently, using the status of a combatant, Ruvin advanced in his career in law enforcement agencies and benefited from corresponding privileges. The illegality of Ruvin obtaining the combatant status was confirmed by the results of an inspection by the General Staff of the Armed Forces, as outlined in a letter from the Head of the Personnel Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Major General Ihor Lysenko, dated August 28, 2020.

Since the documents exposing Ruvin’s forgery of the extract from the order of the Minister of Defence of the USSR dated May 17, 1989, are located in archives in Moscow, Russian special services have significant compromising material for recruiting the Director of the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise, who has access to work with classified information and all possible levels of secrecy.

At the same time, Ruvin has repeatedly claimed that he fought in Afghanistan during Soviet times. In reality, his combat experience was limited to the territory of the Carpathian Military District.

Legends have long circulated about the ability of the director of the research institute to «serve» any authority and provide any expert conclusions. In particular, in recordings secretly made in the office of the former SBI Director Roman Truba, there is an episode dated September 3, 2019, where the head of the bureau and the head of the first department for organizing pre-trial investigations at the SBI, Oleh Koretskyi, discuss a criminal proceeding involving Petro Poroshenko. Truba says that «the suspect needs to be put through a polygraph, and Ruvin will provide the necessary expert conclusion — it’s enough for someone from the President’s Office to call him, and the director of the KSRIFE will do everything.»

It is noted that Ruvin is regularly involved in conducting expert examinations where the desired conclusion is known in advance — primarily in the field of military expertise. This is despite the fact that the military experts of the KSRIFE, including its director Oleksandr Ruvin, do not have the qualifications of forensic experts with the right to conduct military expertise. Ruvin assigned this qualification to himself, just as he issued himself the badge «For Demining.» Despite this, the Ministry of Justice, in violation of legal norms, approved the «Regulation on Qualification Commissions and Certification of Forensic Experts» by an internal order dated March 3, 2015, allowing the creation of an expert qualification commission under the KSRIFE, which is neither a ministry nor another central executive body.

In February 2020, the Ministry of Justice acknowledged that the commission under the KSRIFE does not have the legal authority to grant forensic expert qualifications and, by an order dated February 3, 2020, amended the «Regulation on Qualification Commissions and Certification of Forensic Experts.»

However, Ruvin and his subordinates were not stripped of the illegally obtained certificates of military experts.

The State Bureau of Investigation attempted to close the criminal proceeding regarding the fraud committed by Ruvin on an especially large scale. Following a complaint by Zamana, on January 14, 2021, an investigative judge of the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv overturned the decision to close the criminal proceeding and ordered the SBI to continue the investigation.