The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) has set bail of UAH 900 000 for retired judge Oleksandr Prokopenko in a corruption case in the Supreme Court.
His lawyer Artem Krykun-Trush reported this in a comment to Babel.
This is approximately 11.7 times less than the amount requested by the prosecutorʼs office — UAH 10.7 million. The court also refused to assign Prokopenko an electronic bracelet and prohibit him from leaving his place of residence.
At the same time, Prokopenko must appear at the summons of an investigator, prosecutor, or court, report a change of residence, refrain from communicating with witnesses, and submit documents for traveling abroad.
Prokopenko is suspected of receiving a bribe of $50 000 for a decision in favor of businessman Kostyantyn Zhevaho in 2023 in the Poltava Mining and Processing Plant case.
Corruption case in the Supreme Court
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 the Poltava Mining and Processing Complex. The investigation alleges 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, NABU and SAPO reported new suspicions in the case of large-scale corruption in the Supreme Court: three current judges and one retired judge. Babelʼs sources told 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 on May 16 for his son, the NABU detective Bohdan Prokopenko. 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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