Ukraine may resume investigation of a case where five Ukrainian brothers are accused of smuggling young Ukrainians into the United States, forcing them to work there with little or no pay, and threatening them with violence, a Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) spokeswoman said on Thursday.
"The SBU awaits official information from our foreign partners. We can’t rule out that investigation of this affair may resume in Ukraine," Maryna Ostapenko told Interfax in comments on a report by the U.S. Justice Department that Omelyan, Stepan, Mykhailo, Dmytro and Yaroslav Botsvyniuk had been charged in the U.S.
"We presume that the case in question is a case that the SBU was investigating from 2000 to 2003. In that case, the Botsvyniuk brothers were arrested and accused of human trafficking, in particular with smuggling several dozen fellow-Ukrainians into the U.S., with illegal use of their labor, and with physical violence against the victims," Ostapenko said.
In 2002 the brothers were arrested. The investigation of the case was over in 2003, and after that the accused and their lawyers spent a year studying investigation records. Subsequently they were convicted.
However, a year later an appeal court ordered a reinvestigation, and in 2005 an investigator of the Ternopil regional prosecutor’s office closed the case, claiming there was insufficient evidence to support the charges.
