The scandalous decision of the Constitutional Court
On October 27, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional Article 366-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which provides for punishment for false declarations. The decision is final and cannot be appealed.
After examining the offense under Article 366-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine came to the conclusion that the use of legal structures that do not contain a clear list of laws makes it impossible to unambiguously determine the circle of subjects of the crime, and reference norms make it impossible to establish the circle of their addressees. As a result, persons who cannot be participants in legal relations on declaring, and therefore deliberately failed to fulfill such an obligation, may be held liable for deliberate failure to submit a declaration.
The clarification of the Constitutional Court also states that the legislator must introduce such anti-corruption legislative regulation that will ensure compliance with the rule of law, the components of which are: legal certainty, predictability, proportionality and proportionality.
The Constitutional Court concluded that certain provisions of Law No. 1700 concerning the powers of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption in terms of control of the executive over the judiciary, are unconstitutional, namely:
- features of settling a conflict of interest that arose in the activities of certain categories of persons authorized to perform the functions of the state or local government;
- accounting and publication of declarations,
- control and verification of declarations,
- establishing timely submission of declarations
- full check of declarations,
- monitoring the lifestyle of the subjects of declaration,
- additional financial controls,
- responsibility for corruption or corruption-related offences.
The decision of the Constitutional Court against the anti-corruption infrastructure may have negative consequences for the European integration of Ukraine.
Subsequently, the Office of the President stated that Volodymyr Zelensky would definitely use his right to legislative initiative in order to restore the permanent and most efficient operation of the electronic declaration system and the inevitability of liability for deliberate violation of these rules. Later, the President called an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defense Council.
On the night of October 29-30, Volodymyr Zelenskyy submitted a bill to the Verkhovna Rada, which proposes to terminate the powers of judges of the Constitutional Court, as well as to cancel the relevant changes to the Law of Ukraine “On the Prevention of Corruption”. He also proposes to recognize the decision of the Constitutional Court “insignificant (not creating legal consequences) as such that the judges of the Constitutional Court in conditions of a real conflict of interest.”
