The Prosecutor General’s Office on July 16 charged Tupytsky with illegal interference in the allocation of budget money.
The charges come amid a bitter conflict between Tupytsky and President Volodymyr Zelensky after a number of controversial decisions by the Constitutional Court and corruption scandals surrounding the court’s chairman. Tupytsky was charged in a separate obstruction of justice case in December.
After Tupytsky was suspended due to the obstruction of justice case, he gave his electronic key to the chief accountant and gave an illegal instruction to use this key to sign financial documents, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on July 16.
About 200 financial documents were signed with Tupytsky’s electronic key without his actual presence, including the time when he was abroad, the prosecutor’s office said.
Tupytsky did not respond to a request for comment.
Dismissal saga
Zelensky suspended Tupytsky and another Constitutional Court judge, Oleksandr Kasminin, in December and issued a decree to fire them in March, using the charges against Tupytsky as a justification. The Constitutional Court refused to implement Zelensky’s decrees, saying that they were unconstitutional.
On July 14, the Supreme Court canceled Zelensky’s decree on the dismissal of Tupytsky and Kasminin as unlawful.
Independent lawyers, including Stepan Berko from legal think-tank DEJURE, agreed that Zelensky’s decree was invalid because he has no authority to fire Constitutional Court judges. A Constitutional Court judge can only be fired by a majority of the Constitutional Court.
However, Berko and other legal experts have lambasted the Constitutional Court for failing to suspend or fire Tupytsky despite the charges against him.
In April Zelensky announced a competition for two vacant jobs at the Constitutional Court to replace Tupytsky and Kasminin. This will create a legal collision because two jobs will be de facto occupied by four different people simultaneously, according to DEJURE.
Security guards have refused to let Tupytsky and Kasminin into the Constitutional Court building, citing Zelensky’s decrees. The court is effectively chaired by Tupytsky’s deputy Serhiy Holovaty, who is seen as more loyal to Zelensky.
Tupytsky and Holovaty have been involved in a battle over power at the court, issuing decrees that canceled each other’s actions.
Obstruction of justice
In December, prosecutors charged Tupytsky with unlawfully influencing and bribing a witness to induce false testimony. He denies the accusations.
Since then, Tupytsky has ignored summonses to attend bail hearings five times.
The Prosecutor General’s Office said in May that it had sent the obstruction of justice case against Tupytsky to trial.
The charges against Tupytsky are part of a criminal case into the unlawful seizure of businessman Vladyslav Dreger’s Zuivsky Energy and Mechanical Plant in the city of Zugres in Donetsk Oblast in 2006-2010. At the time, Tupytsky was a judge in a district court in Donetsk.
In December Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative program Schemes published audio recordings in which Tupytsky tries to dissuade Dreger from testifying against another controversial judge, Viktor Tatkov.
Other scandals
Tupytsky has faced harsh public criticism since October, 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. Like several other judges, he voted for the decision despite having a conflict of interest, according to the National Agency for Preventing Corruption.
Tupytsky also acquired land in Russian-annexed Crimea in 2018 and did not show this in his asset declaration, according to an Oct. 28 report by Schemes. The State Investigation Bureau is currently investigating this information.
Meanwhile, the Censor.net news site reported on Jan. 9 that Tupytsky was vacationing in Dubai at a luxury villa whose rent is worth Hr 300,000 ($10,700) per day. Tupytsky denied it, saying he was vacationing in the hotel near the villa. He said that the vacation cost him Hr 242,000 ($8,600).
Schemes has also uncovered repeated manipulation in the distribution of court cases at the Constitutional Court, which could also constitute a crime.
