The Court's Secretariat today refused to comply with the instruction to strip the dismissed chair of payments.
While the Supreme Court is yet to rule in the case into the legality of President Volodymyr Zelensky's decrees which annulled appointments of Oleksandr Tupytsky and Oleksandr Kasminin as Constitutional Court judges, the CCU remains embroiled in controversy.
On Friday, April 30, Serhiy Holovatyi, a CCU judge who considers himself new chair of the Court, issued a decree, seen by UNIAN, ordering that all payments be suspended to Tupytsky and Kasminin, and that the Court-owned vehicles and other property they had been using be recalled.
Immediately after that, Oleksandr Tupytskyi, a chief CCU judge effectively sacked by President Zelensky as part of the efforts to resolve what's seen by many as constitutional crisis following a series of controversial rulings related to anti-corruption reform, issued his own "decree" where he decried Holovatyi's actions as "obviously unlawful" and went on to claim signs of disciplinary and criminal offenses in such actions.
Read alsoZelensky annuls Yanukovych's decree appointing Tupytsky as judge of Constitutional Court
According to the acting chief of CCU Secretariat, Larysa Biriuk, Yanukovych's decrees on Tupytsky and Kasminin's appointment, now abolished by Zelensky, are "individual action acts", while an exhaustive list of grounds for terminating the powers of judges or dismissing them is determined by Constitution and Law on the Constitutional Court of Ukraine."
The official adds that the decision to dismiss a CCU judge shall be made by at least two-thirds of the CCU's constitutional composition, and that an order shall be issued by the CCU chief or their deputy operating as acting chief to terminate the labor relations with the judge in question.
"The absence of an appropriate act on the termination of labor relations determines the absence of legal grounds for ceasing the accrual of remuneration payments to CCU judges Tupytsky and Kasminin," Biriuk noted in the letter.
She noted the same reasoning in another letter claiming there are no grounds to deprive Tupytsky and Kasminin of the right to use Court's vehicles and other state property.
Zelensky's move to sack CCU chief: Background
President Zelensky on March 27 annulled the decrees of former President Viktor Yanukovych on the appointment of Oleksandr Tupytsky (CCU Chairman) and Oleksandr Kasminin as CCU judges, taking into account the Verkhovna Rada's statement of February 17, 2021 regarding the usurpation of power by Yanukovych.
The judges appointed by Yanukovych have created "a threat to the state independence and national security of Ukraine, which violates the Constitution of Ukraine, human and civil rights and freedoms," Zelensky's office said.
Constitutional crisis