Ukrainian authorities have detained the chief justice of the Supreme Court on suspicion of taking bribes from oligarchs as Kiev steps up anti-corruption efforts amid its war with Russia.
Vsevolod Kniaziev is accused of accepting bribes worth $2.7 million, which they said was a “reward” for a ruling “favorable to the owners of financial and credit groups,” according to Ukraine’s anti-graft prosecutors. The group is controlled by mining tycoon Kostyantyn Zhevago.
The high-profile case marks the latest in a string of investigations into the country’s oligarchs, as Ukrainian officials have vowed to further crack down on corruption, a condition for continued financial and military support from the West and integration into the European Union and NATO military alliances.
“The head of the Supreme Court has been detained and measures are being taken to check whether others are involved in criminal activities,” Oleksandr Omelchenko, a prosecutor at Ukraine’s Sapo Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, said on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court fired Kniaziev on Tuesday, and a new chief justice may soon be voted on. “This is a dark day in the court’s history. We must deserve and weather this blow,” the court said.
Kniaziev could not be reached for comment.
Sapo laid out details of the case in a joint statement with Ukraine’s Nabu anti-corruption service, including photos of piles of cash on a sofa and diagrams of the alleged bribery scheme.
Zhevago has been fighting extradition from France to Ukraine in connection with another alleged bank fraud case. His news service has denied his involvement in the alleged bribery and dismissed claims by authorities that the Supreme Court probes a legal dispute involving assets of his London-listed iron ore producer Ferrexpo, Ukrainian media reported.
A spokesman for Zhevago did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Financial Times.
It was unclear how the incident would affect the court, which was reformed before Vladimir Zelensky took over as president in 2019. Zelensky’s government has yet to fully reopen the country’s tainted constitutional court, which he clashed with ahead of a full-scale Russian invasion.
For decades, Ukraine’s oligarchs have used their media and political clout to corrupt state institutions and prop up their businesses. But their influence has been weakened by anti-corruption measures and the damage to corporate interests from the war in Russia.
On Monday, Ukraine’s SBU state security service said it had issued a notice of suspicion to another oligarch, Dmitry Firtash, accusing him of misappropriating nearly $500 million worth of gas. Firtash, who lives in exile in Vienna, where he has fought extradition charges to the United States since 2014, has denied allegations of wrongdoing through a statement issued by his Group DF holding company, which described the investigation as “continued corrupt pressure part of the movement.
The oligarch, a former Gazprom partner involved in the multibillion-dollar supply of gas to Ukraine, was sanctioned by Kiev last year.
The SBU also received a court order this year to freeze the assets of another Ukrainian-approved oligarch, Vadim Novinsky.
Pavel Fuks, another Ukrainian-sanctioned oligarch, called the new SBU case against him “baseless” in a Telegram statement on Tuesday.
“It shows once again that (the authorities) are misleading the Ukrainian president and Ukrainian society to guide their own interests, rather than Ukrainian society’s interests, which is a very cynical display during an all-out war,” he added.
Additional reporting by Sam Jones.