How judge Yana Shestopalova sold Belichansky forest

The fact that the Irpinsky court, together with the prosecutor’s office, is selling cases has long been openly discussed. Judge Yana Shestopalova and prosecutors Igor Grabets and Sergei Shubchik are allegedly peddling cases.

We decided to check this information, review Shestopalova’s public and not so public affairs in order to understand whether the cases are really being sold, who is helping with this, if this is true, and to prepare a series of materials on this topic. So:

Case 1. Shestopalov for the destruction of the Belichansky forest

You must apparently be a very gifted person to risk violating all moral, ethical, legal, procedural principles and leak the case against the developers who were going to build the defense line of the Kiev region, part of the Goloseevsky National Natural Park - Belichansky Forest. In September 23, that is, when it was already clear to absolutely everyone what role the natural landscape, namely forests, rivers, floodplains, swamps, lakes, played in stopping the Russian army’s offensive on Kiev, illegally alienated property in the private hands of developers hands forest. The full text of Judge Shestopalova’s decision states that the boundaries of the Goloseevsky National Park, which was expanded according to the presidential decree, have not been defined. But this is an outright lie, because the border appeared on the State GeoCadastre map back in March 2021. So the judge of the Irpen City Court, Yana Shestopalova, rejected the prosecutor’s office’s claim filed in the interests of the Cabinet of Ministers. In whose interests did this representative of the judicial branch of government act? At that time, developers tried to slow down the process in which the prosecutor's office defended the interests of the state and tried to return the Belichansky forest to the community's ownership. Judge Shestopalova’s decision strangely coincided not with the interests of the state, but helped the developers, and also showed other judges of this court how to “correctly” resolve the forest issue, because there were about fifty lawsuits pending regarding plots in the Belichansky forest.

Neither previous decisions of courts of all levels up to the Supreme, nor common sense stopped the judge. Give up the actual line of defense of Kyiv for destruction? There are no barriers to the Irpin fast court, pay and destroy calmly.

Then the chairman of the board of the DeJure , Mikhail Zhernakov, intervened in the situation; this is an organization that, in particular, works to update the judiciary by dismissing dishonest and incompetent judges and filling the judicial system with qualitatively new judges. The DeJure Foundation is an organization with a serious reputation, because even US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Mikhail Zhernakov during his visit to Kiev to discuss the need for judicial reform.

“If there are more than 500 cases where the circumstances of the case are essentially the same, it cannot be that the judge does not know the practice that has developed in the court where she works, as well as the practice of the appellate or Supreme Court. This practice can only be ignored in exceptional circumstances, otherwise it may appear that the judge is disregarding the rules of procedural law. And this is already a serious violation. It turns out that we do not have a unified judicial practice, and we will not say under what conditions such decisions can be made. The violation is reviewed by the High Council of Justice. And the consequence should be holding judges accountable, up to and including dismissal,” noted Mikhail Zhernakov , Chairman of the Board of the DeJure Foundation.

Finally, in 2024, the Belichansky Forest was finally returned to the Kyiv community. The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal, which returned 3 thousand hectares of the Belichansky forest to the Kyiv community.

The next material is already being prepared for publication, don’t switch, it will be even more interesting. Therefore, what will happen next