What you need to know about the Grand Chamberʼs decision in Zhevahoʼs case to understand the partiesʼ arguments
Zhevahoʼs case is a commercial dispute between companies affiliated with oligarchs Kostyantyn Zhevaho on the one hand and Ihor Kolomoisky on the other. Zhevaho argued in court that his company “Ferrexpo” had legally acquired a stake in the Poltava Mining and Processing Plant in 2002.
Opponents argued that the deal was illegal and the shares should belong to them. The court of first instance sided with Zhevaho. And the Northern Court of Appeal, in which the composition of judges was constantly changing, overturned this decision. The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court was supposed to put an end to the dispute.
It overturned the decision of the Northern Court of Appeal and closed the case, recognizing Zhevaho as the owner of the shares. This decision was supported by 12 judges, including judges Zhanna Yelenina, Ihor Zhelezny, and Iryna Hryhoryeva, who had already received suspicions. Four judges, including Oleksandr Prokopenko, voted against and published a joint separate opinion on this matter. They emphasized that the decision of the Northern Court of Appeal should indeed be overturned, but the case cannot be closed, it should be returned to the appeal court to be considered again there.
That is, unlike their colleagues from the Supreme Court, they did not recognize Zhevahoʼs ownership of the company as legal. Oleh Tkachuk also wrote a separate opinion. Knyazev voted against, but without a separate opinion. He wrote it after NABU and SAPO declared him the suspicion, and he did so in the pre-trial detention center. The decision in the case was adopted by the Grand Chamber in April 2023.
Prokopenko is a long-time opponent of Knyazev, having voted against his initiatives more than once. In the election of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in October 2021, where Knyazev was elected, Prokopenko was the only one who refused to take the ballot because he did not agree with the procedure.
Prosecutorʼs position
The prosecutor is asking for bail of UAH 10.65 million for Prokopenko.
He justifies the amount by saying that Prokopenko, like other judges, received $50 000 from Knyazev. Although, as it turned out in court, only $2 300 in marked bills was found at Prokopenkoʼs home in 2023.
New evidence in the case was Knyazevʼs interrogation report dated May 14, 2026, in which he confessed to the crime.
Knyazev directly states that he agreed to take a bribe for the Grand Chamberʼs decision in the Zhevaho case and "decided to agree with the judges of the Grand Chamber to support this decision and further receive an illegal benefit for it".
Knyazev says the following about Judge Prokopenkoʼs role in the case: at a meeting on March 5, 2023, Prokopenko stated that the decision of the Northern Court of Appeal should be overturned and sent for a new appeal.
After that, somewhere between March 15 and April 19, Knyazev invited Prokopenko to his place to discuss the case again. He suggested that he think about it and, perhaps, agree to the position that the appeal decision should simply be overturned and Zhevahoʼs property should be left — "people will thank you for that".
Knyazev says that he did not directly tell Prokopenko about the bribe, "however, from the context he should have understood that there would be an illegal benefit. Then he said that he would think about it". Knyazev, according to him, does not know whether Prokopenko informed law enforcement officers about this conversation.
Judge Oleksandr Prokopenko (right) at the hearing — the court chooses a preventive measure for him.
Knyazev says he gave Prokopenko a bribe for voting, $50 000, between May 4 and 12.
He allegedly put the money in a black plastic folder with rubber bands and thanked him for considering the case. Prokopenko recalled that he supported a position that was disadvantageous for Zhevaho.
“To which I replied: ʼWell, anyway, people are grateful to all the judges of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court.ʼ After that, he silently took the folder,” Knyazev said during interrogation.
Answering the investigationʼs question about why Prokopenko received $50 000, Knyazev clarified that he gave that amount to almost all judges, "except for a few", and promised to provide explanations about them. The prosecutor did not make these explanations public, but said that Knyazev also testified about other judges, but they have not yet been charged.
Knyazev met Prokopenko twice “by chance” — in March 2026 near the sports club where the former judge goes (the defense talks about this meeting) and in April (the minutes of this meeting are in the case files).
During the meetings, Knyazev tried to talk to Prokopenko about the events of 2023. At the meeting, the prosecutor stated that he did not know whether there was a protocol of intelligence surveillance of the first meeting, and refused to study the protocol of intelligence surveillance of the second meeting at the meeting.
Defense position
Since the hearing was interrupted, the defense did not have time to fully present its position, but the lawyer voiced the key points.
Where did $2 300 in marked bills come from?
The defense recalls that in 2023, NABU found $250 000 in marked bills and $8 000 in unmarked bills at Knyazevʼs house. During interrogation in May 2026, Knyazev explained that he could have exchanged some of the marked dollars for newer bills. Thatʼs how he ended up with $8 000 in unmarked bills.
In turn, back in 2023, Prokopenko said during interrogation that he exchanged part of his salary for dollars in exchangers near the Supreme Court: on Lypska, Pylypa Orlyka, Instytutska streets, or on the Left Bank.
Thus, Prokopenko could have gotten hold of Knyazevʼs marked bills. In support of its version, Prokopenkoʼs defense stated that it has statements confirming that during that period the judge withdrew UAH 260 000 from his card account, which was over $7 000 at the time. The defense says that the investigation did not conduct searches or interrogate employees of these exchangers.
Photo from the search of Knyazevʼs apartment.
In three years, the investigation has found nothing against Prokopenko, so the only evidence now is Knyazevʼs May interrogation.
But since he is an accomplice and, by testifying against others, is trying to improve his situation, his words are not enough to convict.
The story of Prokopenkoʼs apartment, which he gave to his son, a NABU detective
On May 21, lawyer Tetyana Kozachenko wrote on Facebook that three days before receiving the suspicion, Oleksandr Prokopenko gave his apartment to his son Bohdan, who works as a detective at NABU. She concluded that someone at NABU “leaked” information about the suspicion to the detective, and thus his father was able to save his property from seizure. Kozachenko also wrote that it was an official apartment that the judge privatized more than 10 years ago.
Son of a judge and NABU detective Bohdan Prokopenko.
In a comment to Babel, Oleksandr Prokopenko explained that his family privatized the apartment under the legislation that was in effect during 2009-2013, on general grounds. He explained the origin of the apartment at least twice — during the competition for the Supreme Court in 2017 and when he participated in the competition for the Constitutional Court in 2023-2024.
“In both cases, I gave comprehensive explanations to the Public Integrity Council and the Advisory Group of Experts. There are no violations,” Prokopenko noted.
When asked why he decided to give the apartment now, Prokopenko said that his son had lived in this apartment since 2012. Since 2021, he has been living there separately, with his family, and he maintains the housing himself.
"I have been raising the issue of re-registering the apartment for him in the family for several years. In April 2026, I decided to give my son the apartment in which he actually lived all this time, and I wanted to connect this gift with his birthday on May 16. After the legal registration of the gift, the son fulfilled all the requirements of anti-corruption legislation," says Prokopenko.
Prokopenko says that he did not try to save the property from arrest in this way, because the real estate he uses still belongs to him, and if he had intended to hide the property, he should have done it back in 2023, but "I did the exact opposite: I did not get rid of the property, but on the contrary, I acquired it openly."
What Judge Yelenina says about Prokopenko
The prosecutorʼs office suspects Zhanna Yelenina of receiving a $50 000 bribe. The entire amount in marked bills was found at her home back in 2023. The defense did not explain where this money came from at the hearing, referring only to the transcript of her interrogation, which allegedly contains these explanations.
Yeleninaʼs lawyer also said that in 2026, Knyazev twice "accidentally" met a judge on the street and tried to talk about the case, which was later reported in the intelligence surveillance protocol.
In particular, Knyazev tried to obtain information about the involvement of Oleksandr Prokopenko and Supreme Court judge Oleh Tkachuk in bribery.
"But Yelenina could not help him in any way, the communication itself took place out of pity for Knyazev as a former manager, still a young man with a very problematic future," the lawyer said, adding that the court forbade Knyazev from communicating with witnesses, including Yelenina.
Knyazev also called Yelenina, after which she blocked him.
Lawyers for Judge Zhanna Yelenina (center) say that Knyazev twice tried to talk to her about the 2023 case, and in particular about Oleksandr Prokopenko.
Questions that Babel still has to the investigation:
1. Why have new suspicions emerged now, and is this due to the fact that Knyazev made a deal with the investigation? Is exposing other judges a condition of the deal? If so, what other evidence does the investigation have, because it cannot rely solely on the words of a person under pressure?
2. Why does the investigation consider Prokopenko to be involved in the case, if he consistently stated that he did not support the position for which Knyazev campaigned, and on the day of the vote he wrote a separate opinion? The investigationʼs argument that Knyazev also wrote a separate opinion does not stand up to criticism, because he submitted it after he was declared suspicious on August 11, 2023.
3. Is there any evidence, besides Knyazevʼs words, that Prokopenko received the money, and where is the remaining $47 700?
4. Can Prokopenkoʼs words "Iʼll think about it" be considered consent to receive a bribe?
5. The Grand Chamber decision was considered by 18 judges. According to the correspondence between Knyazev and Horburov, the latter was supposed to prepare only 13 packages of money for a total of $1.3 million. Four judges, including Prokopenko, voted against the decision that Knyazev and Zheva needed. Judge Tkachuk also wrote a separate opinion. The remaining 12 judges supported the position. That is, Prokopenko should not have been on the list of those to whom these funds were allocated.
6. If Knyazev organized the distribution of bribes to judges who voted for the decision Zhevaho and Knyazev needed, why is Knyazev nowhere called the organizer of the crime, and in the court, where his actions are being considered on the merits, the form of complicity is also not indicated?
7. If Knyazev makes a deal with the investigation, what will the investigation offer him?
8. According to the law, a plea bargain is only possible if the criminal exposes the organizer. Knyazev is a co-organizer of the crime and exposes not Zhevaho, but other judges to whom he transferred money. Can such a deal be approved by the court?
9. Did the investigation file a petition with the court to seize Prokopenkoʼs apartment, which was previously seized by decision of the NABU director, since preventive arrest by decision of the director is only possible for 72 hours?