Judge Vitalii Pysanets, who oversaw the investigative phase of the case of the murder of journalist Pavlo Sheremet, has been found dead in a village near Kyiv.
Ukrainian media have reported that 53-year-old Pysanets died late on Sept. 11 while at a gathering with friends. The cause of death is not yet known.
The Kyiv regional police office confirmed that a judge died in the village of Pohreby in Kyiv oblast, without naming the victim. Law enforcers are looking for evidence of foul play.
“State Bureau of Investigation employees worked at the scene and will investigate this as a criminal case,” the press statement says.
On Sept. 12, the Attorney General’s Office announced that it was investigating the death of an unnamed judge from the Pechersk district court in Kyiv as a case of “premeditated murder.”
The website of the Pechersk court has published a statement that all hearings chaired by Pysanets have been indefinitely postponed and “will be redistributed for consideration by other judges soon.”
Pysanets sometimes worked on high-profile cases, such as the 2016 car bomb murder of Belarusian journalist Pavlo Sheremet in Kyiv. Pysanets presided over the decision on how to incarcerate suspects in the Sheremet case. Taras Bezpaly, the lawyer for one of the suspects, said he doubted the judge’s objectivity.
Read more: Germany hopes for full investigation into Sheremet’s murder
Pysanets oversaw the case of the former Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovksy, who was suspected of kidnapping Oleh Seminsky, a lawmaker of the Servant of the People party.
He also worked on the case of Hennadiy Korban, leader of the UKROP party and a close associate of the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who was suspected of involvement in organized crime, embezzlement of $1.7 million from the National Defense Fund, and kidnapping.
Additionally, the judge participated in a case related to pro-Kremlin lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk.
According to Chesno, a civil movement monitoring the integrity of government officials, Pysanets graduated from the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University. He started his career in 1998 as a judge of the Sverdlovsk City Court in Luhansk region. In 2003, Pysanets was elected as a judge indefinitely.
In 2015, by presidential decree, he was transferred to the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv, where he worked until his death.
