> 「犯人**とはいわないまでも**何があったのか尋問できるのはお姉ちゃんだけだ！」

I saw an explanation which claimed that what is marked in bold means the same thing as the pattern explained here: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/30100/とまではいかないまでも-meaning. However, another explanation said that it was rather functioning like "not going as far as to say that something/someone/etc. is X but something/someone/etc. (obviously) is Y ".

In my opinion the latter makes more sense here. In general I don't think that it is the same pattern as in the linked post. In any case it would be nice to erase my doubts about this construction.