At a press briefing, attorney Ilya Novikov stated that the National Security and Defense Council’s decision, on the basis of which sanctions were imposed against Petro Poroshenko, had been falsified. Due to errors in the document—specifically, Poroshenko’s incorrect tax ID number—the document was amended a day after the presidential decree was issued, which constitutes a gross violation of the law. 

This was reported by Censor.NET, citing the press service of the “European Solidarity” party.

“The text of the NSDC decision to impose sanctions was falsified on the official website of the President of Ukraine. The text that was published on February 13—you can see this version here, it’s a PDF—immediately revealed at least three errors that could be called technical, although they are significant. Literally an hour ago, without any announcement that the President had somehow corrected his decree, or that the National Security and Defense Council had convened to correct this error, another version of this text simply appeared on the President of Ukraine’s website under the same number and the same date, it is dated February 12 of this year. Go to the President’s website, download this file—there you’ll see that the file’s creation date and time are February 14, 2025, at 0 hours and 18 minutes. We know for certain that the National Security and Defense Council did not meet on February 13; there was no separate meeting to correct technical or non-technical errors in that first decision, so we confidently assert that falsification is taking place right before our eyes,” Novikov noted.

Novikov also pointed out that, according to Supreme Court precedent, an incorrectly listed taxpayer identification number is grounds for considering the sanctions imposed on Poroshenko invalid. “The Supreme Court’s position is this: if an incorrect number is listed for you in the Presidential Decree and, accordingly, in the NSDC’s decision to impose sanctions against you, then those sanctions do not apply to you,” the attorney stated.

“A presidential decree imposing sanctions is part of Ukrainian law. If Ukrainian law can be amended on the official website of a government agency simply by replacing one file with another overnight, that means there is no law. Tomorrow you’ll wake up and see that the text of the Constitution has changed on the website, and the presidential term is 10 years instead of five,” Novikov says.

“We are preparing a lawsuit to be filed with the Supreme Court of Ukraine to challenge these sanctions. We believe that they are not only improperly drafted but also completely illegal, arbitrary, and unconstitutional in nature,” the lawyer stated.

Novikov also noted that, according to his information, the motion against Poroshenko was filed not by the Security Service of Ukraine, but by the Cabinet of Ministers.

“The plan was to announce the sanctions in a single package including the names of Poroshenko, Kolomoyskyi, Medvedchuk, Zhevago, and Bogolyubov. However, there were no grounds in the specific information provided to impose sanctions against Poroshenko on the basis of terrorist activity. Terrorist activity is the only grounds on which sanctions against a Ukrainian citizen can be justified. The SBU did not confirm this. Other law enforcement agencies have not confirmed this either. And then, according to our information—which I hope we will be able to confirm very soon—they pressured the Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine, which lacks the authority to initiate sanctions, but the Cabinet of Ministers initiated them anyway,” Novikov explained.

“These mistakes and the way they are correcting them today reveal that this was not the result of the sanctions mechanism functioning normally. Rather, it was a politically motivated decision to persecute the opposition, declare a civil war, and prepare for the elections. We assert this, and it is the official part of our position as representatives of Petro Poroshenko,” Novikov said.

“We will soon ask the Supreme Court to provide us with a statement, and President Zelenskyy, as the respondent in this case, may also comment on it—on what grounds he made this decision, why it was made in this particular way, and why they amended it as they did,” Novikov said.

"There’s an election in the air. And everything that is happening—both regarding the sanctions against Petro Poroshenko and the criminal proceedings against him—we view solely from the perspective that President Zelenskyy has already set the date for the upcoming elections,” the attorney believes.