Prosecutors have prepared a notice of suspicion for one of the former judges of the Constitutional Court.
The notice comes as part of a usurpation of power case against ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, according to Sergii Gorbatuk, head of the in absentia investigations unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office. Judges of the Constitutional Court are accused of changing the Constitution to unlawfully expand Yanukovych’s powers.
Constitutional Court Chairwoman Natalia Shaptala said in a statement on July 4 that she interpreted the information on the notice of suspicion as pressure on the court.
The notice of suspicion, which was drafted by Gorbatuk’s unit, has yet to be approved by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan told the Kyiv Post on July 4 that Lutsenko would consider the notice of suspicion within four days.
If approved, this will be the first official charge against a Constitutional Court judge. 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 and denied these accusations of sabotage.
Three incumbent Constitutional Court judges – including Shaptala, Mykhailo Hultai and Mykhailo Zaporozhets – and several ex-judges of the court are under investigation in the usurpation of power case. The judges, who have denied wrongdoing, are accused of adopting several decisions that enabled Yanukovych to monopolize political power in 2010.
Specifically, the Constitutional Court canceled the 2004 constitutional amendments on expanding the Verkhona Rada’s powers and thus increased Yanukovych’s authority.
The court also issued a ruling under which lawmakers could switch from opposition parties to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Another Constitutional Court decision aimed at usurping power was a ruling authorizing the 2010 judicial reform, as a result of which Yanukovych stripped the Supreme Court of important powers and transferred them to more loyal courts, according to investigators.
According to records in Yanukovych’s Party of Regions’ alleged off-the-book ledger, judges from the Constitutional Court received $6 million from the Party of Regions for making rulings that helped Yanukovych usurp power.
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, then President Petro Poroshenko and the congress have not done so.
Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court is currently considering the constitutionality of the 2014 the lustration law on the firing of top officials who served Yanukovych. Anti-corruption activists on July 4 protested against the potential cancelation of the law.
Two officials interested in its cancelation are President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Bohdan’s Chief of Staff Oleksiy Dniprov. They are banned from holding their jobs by the wording of the lustration law but claim that they hold them legally.
Another official who would benefit from the law’s cancelation is Anatoly Kalyuzhnyak, a new deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine’s anti-corruption unit appointed under Zelensky. He is also subject to lustration but denies holding his job unlawfully. Kalyuzhnyak also signed a Jan. 18, 2014 plan by the service to counteract EuroMaidan protesters.
The Constituional Court also dealt a blow to its reputation by cancelling the law criminalizing illicit enrichment in February.
