SBU of Rivne demands journalists to report about their grant funds

The department of SBU in Rivnenska oblast demands the head of the local advocacy organization “Agency of journalist investigations” Volodymyr Torbich to provide information related to implementing the projects of international technical assistance and support from donor countries. This was written by Volodymyr Torbich in his blog at the website of “Fourth Estate”. According to him, it is the second letter from SBU of Rivne that he received. The first letter that the journalist published was received on June 13. “The first letter was received in June, and in it, SBU requests from “Fourth Estate” (one of the project implementors) information about the whole project of journalist investigations “Slidstvo.info”, supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada and about the project supported by the U.S., related to the journalist exchange program UMPP IREX. Common sense says that because the agency of journalist investigations from Rivne is one of the project implementors, it cannot have all requested information for the whole project. And the law says that the monitoring of international technical assistance is conducted by the Ministry of Economic Development. So if the requested information exists, it can be found in the Ministry, and that's where one should go. Yet, seemingly, for SBU the main thing is not get information, the main thing is to muscle in on us”, Torbich wrote.