Speaker of the National Bar Association of Ukraine against the Chairman of the Council of Lawyers of the Kyiv Region

Well-known Kiev lawyer Alexey Shevchuk was brought to disciplinary liability in the form of deprivation of the right to practice law with subsequent exclusion from the Unified Register of Lawyers of Ukraine.

The corresponding decision was made on December 19, 2023 by the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of the Kyiv Region Bar. It is unlikely that this news will surprise the followers of the high-profile lawyer on Facebook, who often gets into scandalous stories and, as a rule, does not mince words in his messages.

However, it is the lawyer’s frankness that becomes his Achilles heel, which is skillfully exploited by procedural opponents and enemies, of whom Shevchuk, by the way, made quite a lot during his professional activity.

After all, quite recently, just a few months ago, for such a “violation” the same KSCA already deprived Alexey Shevchuk of the right to practice law for a period of 3 months.

One can sympathize with Shevchuk because, unlike his colleagues in the Ukrainian legal profession, he is not a hypocrite and does not try to please everyone. Conversely, Alexey may be disliked due to his excessive loudness and the impudence with which he approaches the legal market. But both supporters and haters of Shevchuk will be interested in taking a closer look at his “disbarment case,” which seems to be the second time it has been carried out according to the primitive methodology of his opponents and which is becoming a dirty tool in the witch hunt in the Ukrainian legal profession, which is divided into clans. Of course, the above decision of the KSCA dated December 19, 2023 has not yet entered into force and is subject to appeal, which Alexey Shevchuk will most likely win, taking into account the procedural gaps in the specified “manual”. But let's talk about everything one by one...

"Shadow Puppeteer"

Unfortunately, in the current harsh conditions of the struggle for power, cases of bringing competitors to disciplinary liability for allegedly violating the rules of attorney ethics are increasingly becoming custom-made. Usually, the command of a disciplinary process ordered against a lawyer will be a person who will not appear on stage personally, but will try to pull the strings only of his puppets. A performance based on a similar scenario was organized in relation to Shevchuk and in the process of the decision of the disciplinary chamber of the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of the Bar of the Kyiv Region No. 22/2023 dated January 25, 2023, on the complaint of lawyer Masi Nayem. The latter then complained against Shevchuk for inappropriate and, in his opinion, unethical messages on Facebook. And everything would be fine, but the complaint concerned messages from a year ago, which were remembered “for some reason” just before the important interview of Alexey Shevchuk with the Ethics Council in the competition for the position of member of the High Council of Justice, where the lawyer had a great chance of getting through the quota of the President of Ukraine . That is, on the eve of Shevchuk’s important interview at the GRP competition, according to the classic scenario, competitors among the candidates for the competition decided to pour some dirt on him, using for this purpose a suitable complainant with whom Shevchuk had previously had a conflict. However, the absurdity of the decision of the Kyiv State Civil Aviation Authority of the Kyiv region to remove Shevchuk from practice was that his legal activity at the UzhE was suspended since September last year by the lawyer himself in connection with his service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time, the fact that the lawyer was brought to disciplinary liability “did not console the commission” and the choice was ultimately made in favor of another candidate.

In the case of the December decision of the KSCA, a similar scheme worked, according to which, judging by the message of Alexey Shevchuk on Facebook dated December 28, 2023, it is none other than Petr Boyko, chairman of the council of lawyers of the Kyiv region. He had long ago joined the ranks of Shevchuk’s enemies, because he more than once publicly recalled the story when Mr. Boyko publicly approved the coup d’etat of Viktor Yanukovych, speaking to the ex-president in 2010 at the Palace of Ukraine. By the way, Mr. Shevchuk remembered an unpleasant fact about the biography of Peter Boyko after Boyko promised to stand up for the lawyer before the regional KSCA after the decision of January 25, 2023, but he never kept his word. After that, a black cat ran between the two lawyers, and now Boyko is taking revenge on Shevchuk in the old proven way. And he takes revenge not by chance, but just on the eve of a new important interview with candidate Alexey Shevchuk in the competition for the vacancy of a member of the GRP.

Filing a complaint against a lawyer through a dummy

If last time the instrument for bringing Shevchuk to disciplinary liability was a formal complaint from lawyer Masi Nayem, this time the opponents acted even more primitively. As part of the new proceedings, the complainant was not a lawyer, but an ordinary citizen, Lyudmila Novosel, who seemed to be outraged by his disdainful attitude towards the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers, since, given the content of one of Alexey Shevchuk’s posts, he threatened to send “criminals for the wrongdoings they have committed.” . Shevchuk’s angry post concerned the public reception area of ​​a lawyer in the Obolon district that had been damaged by vandals. Such a statement, in the opinion of the citizen, insults the honor of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and does not meet the standards of lawyer ethics.

However, as it turned out later, citizen Lyudmila Novosel and her husband Alexander Novosel are neighbors at the place of residence of Alexey Shevchuk, who owe him a significant amount of money. Moreover, they are employees on the estate of ex-People's Deputy Alexander Dubinsky, who is in prison and feeding bedbugs in custody as part of a case of high treason. Shevchuk explains the complaints filed by these persons as revenge for the trials Dubinsky lost and the removal of the scandalous ex-National Deputy from the disposal of lands in the Obukhovsky district of the Kyiv region, which he tried to illegally take possession of. So, as in the first case, a convenient basis and formal instrument for revenge and removal of Shevchuk from participation in the competition for the GRP becomes an outsider who is not averse to taking revenge on an old enemy and, probably, earning extra money from it.

Failure to notify a lawyer about the consideration of a disciplinary case

One of the factors that may be decisive for a successful appeal of the decision to deprive the right to practice law is the fact that Shevchuk learns the decision of the KSCA after the fact. That is, both processes took place without the presence of a lawyer, who was generally unaware of the existence of disciplinary proceedings pending against him. However, as part of the repeated trial, the KSCA went even further and Shevchuk’s lawyer, Galina Kovbasinskaya, was denied access to the case materials, was not allowed to defend himself, and ultimately made a decision without the presence of Shevchuk and Kovbasinskaya at the meeting. Like last time, the KSCA was in a hurry to make the necessary decision without the participation of the parties, without conducting a linguistic examination of Shevchuk’s statements on Facebook. At the same time, an ordinary everyday complaint against a lawyer from a citizen without a legal education ultimately resulted in a 20-page decision by the KSCA...

Leaking information through the “yellow media”

Since the decision of the KSCA to deprive Shevchuk of his lawyer’s certificate in both cases was made “quietly,” that is, non-publicly and behind the scenes, and the reasoning part of the disciplinary decision raises many questions, publishing such news through official sources, as they say, is “not comme il faut.” Therefore, for the public release of information, the yellow press is used, which, in pursuit of a sensation, or simply for little money, is ready to publish any information dirt. This happened with the decision of the KSCA of January 25, 2023, which was first published by the Union of Dead Lawyers close to Massa Nayema, with whose editor he has been friends for a long time. More serious media ignored this news, deciding that it smelled bad.

However, with the decision of the KSCA dated December 28, 2023, the organizers went a little further and ordered exclusive material from the once reputable specialized publication - “Yuridicheskaya Gazeta”, which, to cover this news story, even took an exclusive detailed comment from the above-mentioned citizen Novosel L. the press turned to Shevchuk for comment even before he received official information from the KSCA. That is, information dirt is leaked to the lawyer through the media long before he even knew about the existence of a disciplinary decision made against him. As a result, a call from yellow press journalists to a lawyer asking him to comment on a decision that the lawyer had not even seen takes the latter by surprise.

PS

Quarrels between lawyers are a fairly common occurrence for the Ukrainian legal profession, because they often find themselves on opposite sides of the barricade of the judicial process. And these are ordinary human emotions. The main thing is to do your job professionally and nobly, so that when you leave the meeting room you are not ashamed to look your colleagues in the face. However, Shevchuk’s disciplinary “cases” indicate that the behind-the-scenes struggle in the Ukrainian legal profession has “reached a new level,” or rather fallen below the plinth, when civilian Facebook puppets are used in the fight against opponents and enemies, and more and more specialized ones that were previously considered professional journalism can now be classified as a “yellow legal press”. Unfortunately, this story among ordinary lawyer quarrels is distinguished by incredible hypocrisy and meanness in difficult times for the country, when the legal profession should be the only and solid fortress of human rights protection during the war.