During the full-scale invasion, the Supreme Anticorruption Court hid the texts of six sentences
End of September 2023. The Supreme Anti-Corruption Court received the first indictment in a high-profile crime during the war, which involved bribery of the Chairman of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Knyazev and other ministers in robes.
The lawyer-intermediary Oleg Goretsky appeared before Themis, who, according to investigators, transferred $1.8 million in cash from the fugitive oligarch Konstantin Zhevago to the judges of the Supreme Court for making the desired decision. As a result, lawyer Goretsky entered into an agreement with the prosecutor to admit guilt. The court intended to consider it in open session.
However, something changed and on October 12, the anti-corruption court issued a secret verdict against Goretsky. The court's press service provided sparse information: the lawyer received a five-year suspended sentence. In exchange, he donated to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the amount of 21 million UAH. Separately, the court recovered from the budget 29 million UAH seized during searches and $350 thousand in the form of special confiscation.
Why Themis forgave lawyer Oleg Goretsky for a serious corruption crime, for which he could face up to 10 years in prison, remains a mystery. After all, society did not hear the court’s arguments due to the secret verdict. On the court’s website there is only a mention that Goretsky “is obliged to cooperate with the prosecution and provide incriminating evidence.” To whom? Judge Knyazev? Or hand over the oligarch Zhevago?
During the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the “Commander in Chief” counted six such secret verdicts of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court. Most of them concern famous political figures. For example, the former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources during the Yanukovych era, Nikolai Zlochevsky.
How a lawyer escaped prison
The official reason for concealing the verdict of Oleg Goretsky rests on paragraph four of part one of Article 7 of the Law of Ukraine “On Access to Judicial Decisions” - the case was heard behind closed doors.
In a comment to the “Glavkom”, legal adviser to Transparency International Ukraine Pavel Demchuk confirmed: there are exceptions when the trial takes place behind closed doors, and the texts of the verdicts are hidden. There are several reasons. Firstly, this may be for reasons of safety of the victim himself. Secondly, court rulings are closed, for example, when the investigation receives permission to conduct searches of persons involved in criminal proceedings.
“As for the latest verdicts of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court, which are hidden from the public. In particular, the defenders of the accused lawyer Oleg Goretsky asked Femida to close the meeting due to an alleged threat to the life of their client. The same thing happened in the case against Nikolai Zlochevsky. The lawyers insisted that the meeting be closed, since information with limited access would be announced, including data on the disease,” the lawyer noted.
Pavel Demchuk added: according to the law, courts must make all decisions public. At the same time, information regarding the personal data of the participants in the process is hidden. However, when the court closes the full text of the verdict, while briefly describing the essence of the punishment through its press service, it looks strange. The way out of this situation, the Glavkom’s interlocutor believes, may be to inform the judge-speakers, in particular, about Themis’s specific motives when passing a verdict, which was ultimately kept secret.
And yes, lawyer Goretsky was essentially saved without any explanation to the Ukrainians.
True, Zerkalo Nedeli’s sources in law enforcement agencies before the verdict revealed the essence of the victim of Goretsky’s “pawn”: “Who is more valuable to the investigation, besides the Chairman of the Supreme Court - this lawyer Goretsky or the oligarch Zhevago? Of course, oligarch!
According to these insiders, the lawyer allegedly spoke about the corruption scheme and the agreements themselves with the oligarch Zhevago. This cast suspicion on the oligarch, who faces up to 10 years in prison.
Greetings from Cyprus
The Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources in 2010-2012 and the former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Mykola Zlochevsky received a symbolic fine in the amount of 68 thousand UAH. Separately, the ex-official transferred a donation of UAH 500 million in support of the Ukrainian army. Themis also classified the verdict against Zlochevsky.
“The court hearing where the agreement was approved was indeed held behind closed doors, but only partially. The law clearly states that in this case the decision is made public with the exception of only the information on which the court made the decision on the closed regime... If the problem is some technical impossibility of the registry that does not allow the decisions to be closed in parts, then no one interferes with SAP (Specialized anti-corruption prosecutor's office - "Glavkom") and HAKS (Higher Anti-Corruption Court - "Glavkom") to publish these parts of the decision independently on their official resources. Closedness does not at all contribute to trust in either the agreement or the verdict. And it is these bodies, first of all, that should be interested in the publicity of information about the results of their work,” such a statement was made by the public organization “Anti-Corruption Center”
From public information it became known that in recent years Nikolai Zlochevsky has been living in Cyprus. He still has a powerful gas production company, Burisma Holdings, in Ukraine. In addition, the ex-minister is still wanted by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau for committing a corruption crime (Part 4 of Article 369 of the Criminal Code).
At the same time, the other day the UP publication published the full text of the verdict in the Zlochevsky case. The document has 11 pages. The ex-minister was accused of organizing the payment of $6 million in bribes for the closure of criminal proceedings by anti-corruption authorities. We were talking about the so-called “Kurchenko case”, in which Zlochevsky was accused of stealing a stabilization loan from the National Bank allocated to the Real Bank of Sergei Kurchenko, a businessman close to the Yanukovych family.
According to investigators, in June 2020, the ex-minister, sitting in Cyprus, instructed trusted persons to hush up the criminal case: ex-employee of the fiscal service Elena Mazurova and Burisma lawyer Andrei Kichi. Mrs. Mazurova took the initiative into her own hands and, without informing the former minister, contacted people who were ready to hand over a bribe to the then head of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, Nazar Kholodnitsky. On the way to Kholodnitsky, $1 million was “lost,” which the accomplices decided to keep for themselves. On June 12, 2020, the ex-minister’s “decided” was exposed.
The criminal episode with Zlochevsky now looks like the ex-minister allegedly gave $6 million in bribes to trusted persons and no longer monitored how the issue was resolved. Three years after the exposure, in early March 2023, the indictment was filed in the Anti-Corruption Court. As follows from the text of the published verdict, Zlochevsky did not admit guilt until mid-July. And then he suddenly signed an agreement to admit guilt and began to donate to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He also sincerely repented of the crime, virtually being in the courtroom thanks to a video link.
From the unexpected in the verdict. The prosecutor's office “multiplied by zero” 400 gigabytes of collected information on the mentioned criminal case of Nikolai Zlochevsky. That is, she refused to examine the evidence in order to speed up the consideration of the case.
Themis also lifted the seizure of Zlochevsky’s money, which was in a foreign bank account. Unfortunately, not a word is said in the verdict about the amount of funds.
The funny thing is that the anti-corruption court canceled the detention of Zlochevsky, who at the time of the verdict was sitting quietly on the island of Cyprus. As it turned out, the arrest was formally in force since August 2020.
By the way, the verdicts against “Zlochevsky’s people” are displayed differently in the court register. In particular, for Elena Mazurova, who received a five-year suspended sentence, the text of the verdict is publicly available. But the sentence of Andrei Kicha, who was also given a suspended sentence of five years, is kept secret.
The ex-head of the Accounting Office will snap
The verdict in the case of the former Chairman of the Accounts Chamber, Valery Patskan, was also under lock and key. Officially, he was accused of embezzling 127 thousand UAH, illegally received as compensation for rent. The event occurred in 2017-2018, when Patskan worked as a people’s deputy. The court imposed a fine of 10.2 thousand UAH and deprivation of holding positions in government for two years. But due to the statute of limitations, he released the ex-official from punishment.
On the day the verdict was announced, Valery Patskan made a message on Facebook. In particular, he called the criminal case political persecution and promised to appeal the verdict.
The consideration of the criminal case against the former head of the board of PJSC State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine, Petro Vovchuk, has quietly ended. The verdict was hidden from the court registry, and the defendant, who was charged with causing $60 million in damages, received a suspended sentence. The ex-official caused great damage to the state by selling barley and wheat to Russian businessman Alexei Fedorichev at prices below market prices.
Vovchuk hid in Lithuania for four years. After which, in the spring of 2023, he was extradited to Ukraine with fanfare, and then... released.
“To ensure that society does not have questions about the justice system in the future, judges should carefully balance conflicting rights. This means that the right of the accused or suspect to protect his own information is weighed against the safety and potential harm to society from the closure of the trial and conviction. It is the court’s task to choose a middle ground,” concluded lawyer Pavel Demchuk.
