A new corruption scandal has erupted in Odessa: NABU and SBU officers detained two judges of the Primorsky District Court, Denys Dontsov and Olga Shentseva. Law enforcement officers informed them of suspicion of extortion and receiving illegal benefits during the consideration of civil cases.
According to the investigation, the judges, together with the lawyer who acted as a mediator, offered the defendants to “resolve the issue” for a monetary reward. In one of the cases, the defendants turned to a party to the proceedings with a proposal to secure the necessary court decision for $10,000. The money was planned to be received in two stages — part before the start of the case, and the rest immediately before the desired decision was made.
Before the suspicions were announced, both judges, as is customary in such cases, urgently applied for leave. Despite this, they were detained after conducting secret investigative actions and documenting the illicit benefit received.
The detention of Dontsov and Shentseva caused additional public outcry, as it occurred against the backdrop of systematic criticism of the Primorsky District Court for blocking investigations into a number of multibillion-dollar corruption cases. According to the applicants, this court has repeatedly refused to open proceedings, effectively paralyzing the start of investigations into individuals with political or economic influence.
These are several high-profile episodes, including the situation with 8.8 billion hryvnias allocated for the construction of a water pipeline to Mykolaiv, complaints about the agreements of the “GTS Operator of Ukraine” with a dubious contractor, as well as the case regarding the supply of strategic raw materials to the Russian Federation through the Novoselivskyi Mining and Processing Complex. In each of these cases, the court refused to enter information into the ERDR, despite the evidence provided by the applicants.
The detention of Odessa judges for bribery is a telling indicator of larger problems in the work of the Primorsky District Court, which for years has featured in statements about inaction and the actual creation of conditions for impunity in cases with multi-billion dollar losses to the state.
Law enforcement agencies are continuing their investigation and do not rule out the possibility of new suspects.
