At the same time, Supreme Court Chairman Knyazev or President Zelensky can resolve the situation with one document
The reluctance of the Supreme Court to deprive the head of the Cassation Economic Court of Ukraine Bohdan Lviv of his judicial status despite the proof of his Russian citizenship, may destroy the legitimacy of the Supreme Court of Ukraine as such, the head of the Countermeasures Center believes of corruption Vitaly Shabunin.
He recalled that Article 121 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Judiciary” clearly states that the acquisition of citizenship of another state is equivalent to the automatic termination of a judge's powers, and the evidence of a journalistic investigation, according to him, is sufficiently convincing not in favor of Lviv.
“But the judges of the Supreme Court are angry at both the law and common sense. The highest judges of Ukraine are okay with the fact that the Commercial Court of Cassation is headed by a citizen of Russia! Dear judges of Bohdan Lviv, do you realize that you are killing the legitimacy of the Supreme Court with your own hands? With your stubbornness, are you destroying the country's highest court?”, – said the anti-corruption activist.
He added that if the current government wants to curtail the independence of the judicial branch and the Supreme Court, Ukrainians may not oppose it precisely because of this history. It's a pity for the institution of the Supreme Court – we will have to clean it up after you for a long time,” Shabunin noted.
The head of the Central Committee noted that the issue can easily be resolved by the head of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, Vsevolod Knyazev, who can dismiss Bohdan Lviv from the court. or President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, depriving him of Ukrainian citizenship.
At the same time, the day before, several judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine published an open appeal to convene a meeting of judges on September 26, at which they propose to consider the issue of the early dismissal of Bohdan Lviv from the post of chairman of the Cassation Economic Court within the Supreme Court and the appointment of a temporary acting chairman of the KGS within the Supreme Court.
“We do not claim that Bohdan Lviv, the chairman of the Commercial Court of Cassation, is a citizen of the Russian Federation or owned real estate there. These facts should be established by the competent authorities as soon as possible. But such accusations, supported by documents, are too serious and cannot be ignored,” the initiators noted.
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We remind you, journalists of the “Schemes” project » established that judge Bohdan Lviv has Russian citizenship. Having received a Russian passport in the 90s, he not only did not give it up while climbing the career ladder in the Ukrainian justice system, but on the contrary, he renewed it in 2012 and his document is still not listed in the register of invalids. Lviv himself denies this.
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At the same time, the majority of judges of the Commercial Court of Cassation as part of the Supreme Court at the meeting on September 19 did not support the introduction of the issue of expressing confidence or no confidence in their chairman, judge Bohdan Lviv, to the agenda. The judges decided not just to deprive Bohdan Lviv of his mantle, but also to keep him in the position of chairman, although they limited his access to state secrets.
