The judges of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court have ejected its chairperson from the judicial body and chosen a new leader in a controversial move broadly viewed as part of the struggle between outgoing President Petro Poroshenko and President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Late on May 14, the judges voted to fire Stanislav Shevchuk as a judge on the court and elected Natalia Shaptala as the new chairperson.
In doing so, the Constitutional Court upheld a decision of its ethics commission and dismissed Shevchuk for an alleged disciplinary infraction and negligence. The court did not respond to a request for comment.
Shevchuk became a judge of the Constitutional Court in March 2014 and was elected its chairperson in February 2018. During the recent presidential election, Shevchuk was perceived as backing challenger Zelenskiy.
Shaptala has also proven controversial. She has been under investigation for allegedly abusing her authority to help ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, to usurp power. She has denied the accusations.
In a March 14 Facebook post, Shevchuk wrote that “an anti-constitutional coup has taken place at the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.” He accused the court judges of committing a grave crime and usurping power.
Shevchuk said he would appeal his dismissal in court.
Accusations
The Constitutional Court accused Shevchuk of illegally appointing Mykhailo Chuzhmir, Dmytro Labozhenko and Denys Nevyadomsky as his advisors. According to an investigation by the Bihus.info journalism project, they are acquaintances of Shevchuk’s brother, Rulav Oddr.
The Constitutional Court also said that Shevchuk had pressured the court’s judges in February not to consider the constitutionality of sanctions that the Verkhovna Rada proposed imposing on the NewsOne and 112 Ukraine television channels for allegedly pro-Russian coverage.
The Constitutional Court judges also claimed that Shevchuk had illegally published the court’s decision to recognize a bill stripping lawmakers of parliamentary immunity as constitutional without publishing dissenting opinions.
Conflict with Poroshenko
The judges argue that Shevchuk politicized the Constitutional Court by telling the strana.ua news site in March that he would refuse to swear in a president if the presidential election was rigged. This was interpreted as a veiled reference to Poroshenko.
Shevchuk also said in the interview that, after his election as chairperson in 2018, Poroshenko proposed that the judge become a member of his team. Shevchuk said he responded that he could only contact the president in the interests of serving the Constitution, and Poroshenko did not like this answer.
Shevchuk claimed that Poroshenko associates subsequently launched a smear campaign against his brother, Rulav Oddr.
After the first round of the presidential election on March 31, Oddr attached a Zelenskiy logo to his Facebook profile picture, before later removing it. That was perceived as another sign that Shevchuk was backing Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy would go on to win 73 percent of the vote in the April 21 runoff election.
After being removed from the court, Shevchuk claimed on Facebook that Poroshenko was behind his dismissal. The Presidential Administration did not respond to a request for comment.
“Poroshenko is behind this crime and he’s doing his best to keep his power and preserve control over the main state institutions,” Shevchuk said. “…I’m calling on all responsible and concerned citizens of Ukraine to unite to protect our choice, President-elect (Zelenskiy) and the Constitution.”
In April, the Schemes investigative journalism project reported that Shevchuk had met with Andriy Bogdan, a lawyer for Zelenskiy and billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, at the Constitutional Court on March 13.
Bogdan is subject to the 2014 lustration law, which prevents the appointment of top Yanukovych-era officials to state jobs. Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court is currently considering the constitutionality of the lustration law.
Shevchuk said he has known Bogdan for 10 years.
Bogdan and Shevchuk admitted that they had met, but denied discussing the lustration law. They said they had discussed the Constitutional Court’s controversial Feb. 26 decision to cancel a law criminalizing illicit enrichment as unconstitutional.
Illicit enrichment scandal
Shevchuk’s decision to back the cancellation of the illicit enrichment law damaged the judge’s reputation.
The court claimed that the law violated the rule of law, the legal certainty principle and the presumption of innocence. This legal reasoning has been rejected as flawed and incorrect by numerous Ukrainian and foreign experts.
Shevchuk claimed that the abolished norm was in fact “obliging a defendant to collect evidence to prove his innocence,” which violates the Constitution.
“It is a tough decision but it is totally justified because the fight against corruption should be real, not a pretend one,” Shevchuk wrote on Facebook.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch subsequently lambasted the law’s cancellation.
Later, on May 3, the Anti-Corruption Action Center watchdog organization wrote on Facebook that Shevchuk had been denied a U.S. visa. Shevchuk told the Kyiv Post that he is trying to find out whether this is true.
New chairperson
Shaptala, the newly-appointed chairperson of the Constitutional Court, has also come under fire. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Civil society watchdogs call her a member of the “Yanukovych” group of Constitutional Court judges because she was appointed to the court under Yanukovych in 2010 and comes from the ex-president’s main political base, Donetsk.
Shaptala and two other incumbent Constitutional Court judges — Mykhailo Hultai and Mykhailo Zaporozhets — are under investigation in a usurpation of power case against Yanukovych. The judges, who have denied wrongdoing, are accused of adopting several decisions that enabled Yanukovych to monopolize political power.
According to records in the alleged off-the-books ledger of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, judges from the Constitutional Court received $6 million from the party for rulings that helped the ex-president usurp power.
While Yanukovych currently faces criminal charges in Ukraine, there have been no formal charges against the Constitutional Court judges accused of helping Yanukovych usurp power. The Prosecutor General’s Office has faced accusations of covering up for the judges for political reasons. It has denied these accusations of sabotage.
In 2014, the Verkhovna Rada fired five Constitutional Court judges for violating their oath by letting Yanukovych monopolize power. Lawmakers also urged the president and the Congress of Judges to fire the remaining judges implicated in the case.
However, Poroshenko and the congress have not done so.
