HACC has chosen a preventive measure for the judge involved in the corruption case in the Supreme Court in favor of Kostyantyn Zhevaho

The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) has set bail for Judge Zhanna Yelenina at UAH 3 million. She is involved in the Supreme Court corruption case in favor of Kostyantyn Zhevaho.

This was reported by HACC.

Yelenina was also banned from traveling outside the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions and from communicating with other suspects. The woman is suspected of receiving $50 000 in bribes — this money was found on the judge during a search.

Another person involved in the case, retired judge Oleksandr Prokopenko, was not given a restraining order today, and the court announced a recess. The prosecutor had requested a bail of UAH 10.7 million for him. He is also suspected of taking a bribe of $50 000.

What is this?

In May 2023, NABU and SAPO reported that they had uncovered a corruption scheme in the Supreme Court. Among those involved was the then-Chairman of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Knyazev, who was caught taking a record $3 million bribe.

NABU said that the case is related to decisions in favor of businessman Kostyantyn Zhevaho in the case of the Poltava Mining and Processing Plant. Zhevaho bought the plant in 2002, but the companyʼs former shareholders decided to challenge the purchase and sale agreement for 40.19% of the shares.

The court initially dismissed the claim, but in 2022, an appeal overturned the decision and declared the contract invalid. The case then went to the Supreme Court, which in April 2023 decided to leave Zhevaho with 40% of Poltava Mining and Processing Complex. The investigation claims that the businessman bribed judges to obtain this decision.

The press service of Kostyantyn Zhevaho told Babel that the shareholder of “Ferrexpo” has nothing to do with this situation, and the information that the bribe could have been given by people acting in the interests of the businessman is false.

They state that the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court adopted a resolution dated April 19, 2023, which recognized the legality of the acquisition of Poltava Mining and Processing Complex by “Ferrexpo” in 2002, not in the interests of Zhevaho, but "in the interests of a large, public company with respectable shareholders, which is traded on the main platform of the London Stock Exchange".

On May 19, the NABU and the SAPO declared new suspicions in the case of large-scale corruption in the Supreme Court: three current judges and one retired judge. Babelʼs sources told us that these are judges of the Grand Chamber Ihor Zhelezny, Iryna Hryhorieva and Zhanna Yelenina, as well as Oleksandr Prokopenko, who has been retired since 2024.

On May 21, it became known that Prokopenko had re-registered the apartment for his son, the NABU detective Bohdan Prokopenko, on May 16. NABU responded that this detective was not part of the investigative group investigating the case and did not have access to the case materials. The bureau is conducting an internal investigation.

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