The Court “Legalized” Classification of Assets Declarations Submitted by Officers of the Security Service of Ukraine – Court Decision

After a 5-month delay, Kyiv District Administrative Court pronounced a decision in the case AntAC vs. the Security Service of Ukraine concerning classification of the assets declarations of the SSU top management and rejected all the demands of the NGO in their entirety.

The judgement was passed 9 months after the suit was filed.

The lawyers of the Anti-corruption Action Centre received the respective ruling in the Court office.

We remind that the AntAC tried to make the SSU declassify the assets declarations of its top officials and investigators as well as to render illegal creation of their internal system of processing and storage of declaration.

The activists also requested the court to recognize as illegal lack of action of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, in particular, their non-adoption of the special procedure of declarations submission by the field and intelligence officers – and, on the contrary, their approval of the SSU own “secret” declaration system.

The activists also asked the court to make the top officials of the SSU and National Agency on Corruption Prevention to publish the declarations missing from the Register.

The court motivated their refusal by the absence of deadline for National Agency on Corruption Prevention to adopt the special procedure – thus allowing its everlasting approval. Moreover, the court finds that according to the law all of the investigation, intelligence and counter-intelligence staff is secret.

“In fact, such court decision allows a number of state agencies – beside the SSU –the Police, National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine, Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine to establish their own declaration system and not to submit declaration to the Register of National Agency on Corruption Prevention” – Olena Scherban, legal expert of Anti-corruption Action Centre explains.

AntAC will definitely appeal this court decision, as it is regarded as “having nothing in common with justice”, and the three judges that tried the case “simply ignored the practice of ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), Ukrainian legislation, conscience and common sense”.

“The chamber presided by Ruslan Arsirii was hearing the case for 4 months, then they were preparing the judgement for another 5 months – though, as we can see now, the result was premoderated. The issue of declassification of the SSU officers’ declarations is a matter of principle for the whole AntAC team. We will appeal to every judicial instance in this country, up to the Supreme Court – to have grounds to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights”, – Scherban says commenting on the court decision. The NGO believes their second suit of the same nature – but against the Military Prosecutor’s Office – is doomed and the court will pronounce the same questionable decision.

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