Lawyer Novikov told how the SBU pressured Supreme Court judges

Lawyer Ilya Novikov described in detail how SBU officers influenced Supreme Court judges in the case of lifting illegal sanctions against Petro Poroshenko.

This is reported by “Pryamiy” .

“We already expected that the decision would be announced on April 3, because the court had finished hearing all additional explanations. And suddenly on April 2 we find out, we receive a phone message that the hearing will not take place. It turned out after the fact that one of the judges, Judge Kashpur, wrote a statement about taking a leave of absence on April 2, on the eve of the hearing. This is not usually done in principle,” Novikov said.

He added that all judges know that if the next hearing could be the last, you have to be present.

“Of course, anyone can get sick. But asking for leave, especially according to our information, it was a very short leave. It was a formal reason for being absent from the meeting. And then we already understood that, probably, the president was not just wasting time, that, probably, maybe they were looking for a certain solution, maybe there was some pressure on the court,” he said.

According to Novikov, there was already such a “red flag.”

“Then there was a pause of 3 months. On the eve of our previous session on June 30, when the court announced that it would announce the decision on July 10, information began to arrive that there were certain employees of the special services, specifically the SBU, who worked in a unit that was supposed to protect the courts from interference, including from enemy states, the aggressor state. But this gave them certain contacts, that these people were trying to get in touch with the judges,” he noted.

The lawyer noted that according to the information available, one of the judges is being threatened with having criminal proceedings opened against her elderly father.

“That is, in fact, the threat was reduced to the possibility of taking hostages, if we call a spade a spade. On June 30, we noted that these people still have a chance to fight back, still have a chance to reverse this attempt,” Novikov emphasized.

He also noted that Western partners and diplomats were constantly monitoring the progress of the case.

“For them, this particular case is a certain indicator that if the court shows independence in such a case, it may indicate that there is an independent judiciary in Ukraine. If they bend, it means that in any other cases we can expect that any court can be bent,” he noted.

The lawyer emphasized that they saw that at the beginning of the year there were all signs that the court could side with the plaintiff, that the party delaying this process was the defendant state itself, Zelensky, and the Cabinet of Ministers.

“And suddenly decisions are made where three judges vote for the state, and two judges write a separate opinion. This is a unique situation, because the absolute majority of decisions on sanctions are adopted by judges unanimously. So that two judges and so that it is clear that every vote in this decision is important, because changing even one vote would change the result. It seems to me that there was simply no one like that,” Novikov concluded.

As reported, after the Supreme Court session, Ilya Novikov named the names of the SBU officers who put pressure on the Supreme Court judges – Eduard Rudyuk and Vitaliy Solodzhuk.

The day before, Petro Poroshenko’s lawyers filed an appeal against the Supreme Court’s decision to refuse to lift the illegal sanctions imposed by Zelensky.

As is known, the Supreme Court, under pressure from the authorities, refused to lift illegal sanctions against opposition leader Petro Poroshenko – this decision will block Ukraine’s membership in the EU.

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