Lately, the Constitutional Court has been at the center of a standoff between its chairman Oleksandr Tupytsky and his deputy Serhiy Holovaty.
Tupytsky tried to have Holovaty fired, while Holovaty attempted to consider the State Investigation Bureau’s corruption charges against Tupytsky. Both attempts failed.
Meanwhile, new evidence has emerged of conflicts of interest and nepotism at the Constitutional Court, according to Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe’s Schemes investigative project. The Constitutional Court declined to comment.
The events follow a bitter conflict between Tupytsky and President Volodymyr Zelensky following a number of controversial decisions by the Constitutional Court and corruption scandals around the court’s chairman.
In December, Zelensky suspended Tupytsky based on corruption charges against him. The Constitutional Court refused to implement Zelensky’s decree, saying that it was unconstitutional.
However, security guards have refused to let Tupytsky into the Constitutional Court building and effectively the court has been recently chaired by Holovaty, who is seen as more loyal to Zelensky.
In December the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Tupytsky with unlawfully influencing and bribing a witness to make him give false testimony. He denies the accusations.
Tupytsky has faced harsh public criticism since Oct. 27, when the Constitutional Court issued a ruling that effectively destroyed Ukraine’s entire asset declaration system for state officials, eliminating a crucial pillar of the country’s anti-corruption infrastructure.
Court meeting
On March 17, the Constitutional Court tried to consider starting a probe against Tupytsky based on the corruption charges against him. However, there were not enough votes to include the issue in the agenda.
Meanwhile, on the same day, Tupytsky initiated the consideration of the dismissal of his deputy Holovaty.
The issue was raised due to requests by Dmytro Korchynsky, a controversial far-right activist, and Geo Leros, a lawmaker expelled from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
Korchynsky argued that Holovaty should be fired because of his alleged unethical behavior, while Leros said that Holovaty should be fired for voting for the 2010 Kharkiv treaty, which extended Russia’s right to lease military bases in Crimea in 2042.
Controversial ruling
Meanwhile, new evidence has emerged of wrongdoings at the Constitutional Court, according to a March 11 investigation by Schemes.
Specifically, the consideration of the asset declaration system by the court on Oct. 27 was very speedy and took just one day. It was an unprecedentedly fast case, according to Stanislav Shevchuk, ex-head of the Constitutional Court.
During the hearing on the asset declaration case, 13 judges out of the 15 Constitutional Court judges, including Tupytsky and Ihor Slidenko – the rapporteur in the case – asked to be recused due to a conflict of interest, Schemes reported, citing documents on their self-recusals. Ironically, a majority of the judges then voted to reject the recusal requests despite the fact that they had previously declared their conflicts of interest themselves.
The National Agency for Preventing Corruption (NAPC) also said that several of the judges had conflicts of interest because they were under investigation by the NAPC and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) over their assets. In February the NAPC sent to court a report on Tupytsky’s conflict of interest due to his failure to declare a land plot in Russian-annexed Crimea.
Commenting on the conflict of interest accusations, Slidenko argued that the law required him to vote either for or against the decision after the recusal was rejected. Another Constitutional Court judge, Volodymyr Moysyk, responded that he was not worried about a conflict of interest after his recusal was rejected.
Farmland sales
One of the Constitutional Court judges, Serhiy Sas, has another potential conflict of interest, according to Schemes.
Sas was a lawyer for Batkivshchyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko and represented the party in parliament.
Despite this, he was selected as the rapporteur in the Constitutional Court case pushed by Tymoshenko to declare the law lifting the ban on farmland sales as unconstitutional.
Moreover, Sas published a draft decision on the law beforehand, which could have been a violation of ethics.
Sas asked the Constitutional Court to be recused due to a conflict of interest but the court rejected his request.
Manipulation with court cases
Schemes also uncovered a possible manipulation in the distribution of court cases at the Constitutional Court.
On May 20, 2020 oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky’s Zaporizhzhia Ferroalloy Plant filed two identical motions with the Constitutional Court, while lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky, an ally of Kolomoisky, filed a motion to recognize the decree on the appointment of Artem Sytnyk, head of the NABU, as unconstitutional.
The first two motions could have been filed in order to ensure that the motion on Sytnyk automatically goes to Tupytsky, according to the alphabetical order, according to Schemes.
In 2020 the Constitutional Court canceled then-President Petro Poroshenko’s 2015 decree to appoint Sytnyk as head of the bureau and struck down clauses of the NABU law that give the president a role in appointing the head of the bureau.
The measures were criticized by legal experts and anti-corruption activists as an effort by corrupt actors to take revenge on the NABU by providing an excuse for firing Sytnyk. Independent lawyers cast doubt on the legality of the Constitutional Court rulings.
Nepotism
Schemes also found evidence of nepotism at the Constitutional Court.
Relatives of Constitutional Court judges have been hired by the court and are getting big salaries at taxpayers’ expense.
Yulia Kasminia, the daughter of Constitutional Court judge Oleksandr Kasminin, is an aide to Constitutional Court judge Oleksandr Lytvynov, while Olga Shaptala, the daughter-in-law of ex-Constitutional Court Chairwoman Natalia Shaptala, is an aide to Kasminin.
Meanwhile, Tamara Fedorenko, the wife of ex-Constitutional Court judge Mykhailo Hultai, is an aide to Constitutional Court judge Viktor Kryvenko.
Kasminin argued that such appointments were lawful.
Editor’s Note: This report is part of the Investigative Hub project, within which the Kyiv Post monitors investigative reports in the Ukrainian media and brings them to the English-speaking audience, as well as produces original investigative stories. The project is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.
