The High Council of Justice lifted the immunity of four judges, allowing them to be detained.
Recently, NABU and SAPO exposed four judges of the Kyiv Court of Appeal - Vyacheslav Dzyubin, Igor Palenik, Viktor Glinyany and Yuriy Sliva. They are all suspected of receiving a bribe totaling $35 thousand.
The investigation believes that these judges created a criminal scheme to sell “correct decisions” for bribes. And they were caught illegally removing the arrest from the plane. We'll tell you how it happened, where the money was found and what will happen next.
How did the bribe scheme work?
In November of this year, representative of PJSC Constanta Airlines Tatyana Polishchuk agreed with the judge of the Kyiv Court of Appeal Vyacheslav Dzyubin to cancel the arrest of two unique An-74TK-100 aircraft, which are capable of transforming from cargo to passenger and vice versa.
These planes were material evidence in criminal proceedings regarding obstruction of the legitimate activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. By the way, they are owned by the Estonian company Eka Grupp OU, and the holders in Ukraine were Motor Sich JSC and Constanta Airlines.
For this “service” Polishchuk offered $35 thousand for Dzyubin and three more of his colleagues. The judge planned to keep $5 thousand for himself as a mediator, and divide the rest among the panel judges - $10 thousand each.
Subsequently, according to investigators, Dzyubin received consent from his colleagues Palenik, Glinyanoy and Sliva, who had the opportunity to hear the case on appeal.
However, as it turned out later, he was not going to give them $30 thousand. Dzyubin estimated his “mediation” at $10 thousand, and gave the remaining $25 thousand for distribution to colleagues.
Finally, at the end of November, a panel of judges lifted the arrest from one of the planes, and Dzyubin at the next meeting received $35 thousand in a car from Tatyana Polishchuk. The money was divided, but the very next day law enforcement officers detained all four judges involved and conducted searches at their homes.
Coffee, whiskey and... dollars
Detectives recorded the further route of the bribe received. Dzyubin left his share right in his office.
The judge put the remaining funds, namely $25 thousand, in a whiskey box and brought it into Palenik’s office, where they had a short dialogue. Dzyubin: “This is kanyak, kanyak. Not cognac, but whiskey, as you like everything.” Palenik at that moment put the box under the table, and Dzyubin added: “Drink to my health.”
Then Judge Palenik essentially took over the baton. To transfer $8.3 thousand each to his colleagues Glinyanoy and Sliva, he replaced the bills with his own, and then packaged them in a coffee bag and an advertising package for an Internet provider.
At the same time, when distributing the “reward” he used the “best” acting abilities. Handing over a bribe to Glinyany under the guise of advertising, Palenik remarked: “The advertising here is like this, you read it, the Internet is good.”
In general, Palenik had a very strange relationship with coffee, since he handed over part of the bribe to Judge Sliva in a coffee package and with the words: “For coffee, coffee, you treated me, it’s instant, they say it’s good.” And at his home, in addition to the bribe itself, $115 thousand and €410, also packaged in coffee bags, were found and seized.
And who revealed the four judges? There is a version that Tatyana Polishchuk herself contributed to the exposure of the scheme, who probably collaborated with law enforcement officers to thoroughly document and record the fact of the transfer of the bribe.
The defense insisted that Polishchuk was a lawyer whom law enforcement could not engage for confidential cooperation. However, they received this information from the registry, so it is possible that her last name and first name could have been changed for security purposes. Now there is no information about the suspicion being served on her.
At the same time, the defense lawyers continued to insist that their clients, all four judges, were provoked.
What's next for the judges?
Law enforcement officers informed the four judges involved about suspicions of “receiving unlawful benefits on an especially large scale, committed by an organized group” (Part 3 of Article 28, Part 4 of Article 368 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
Dzyubin, Palenik, Glinyany and Sliva face 8 to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property and deprivation of the right to hold certain positions for up to 3 years.
On December 4, the High Council of Justice lifted the immunity of judges, allowing them to be taken into custody. VAKS arrested the suspects in the courtroom, and as an alternative they were given bail: 4 million UAH for Palenik, 2.5 million UAH for Slyva, 5 million UAH for Glinyany. The last two judges took advantage of this opportunity and have already left the pre-trial detention center, having paid their bail, and they were also suspended from justice for two months.
“Mediator judge” Dzyubin has not yet been given a preventive measure, since immediately after the suspicion was announced, he was admitted to the hospital. The investigating judge decided to allow his remote participation in the trial scheduled for December 18.
By the way, the decision to select a preventive measure for the suspect is still classified. Therefore, the details are unknown, but TI Ukraine continues to monitor this case.
