"Meddling" in the operations of the judiciary could entail criminal liability, the court's harsh statement says.
The Constitutional Court has branded "illegitimate" a presidential decree suspending CCU chairman, Oleksandr Tupytsky.
That's according to a commentary released by the CCU Secretariat's Legal Department.
"The decree, issued by President of Ukraine, is not based on the Constitution of Ukraine, and does not correspond to it. The powers of President of Ukraine are determined exclusively by the Basic Law of Ukraine," the commentary says.
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The president "went beyond constitutional powers" in his move to suspend the CCU chair, the commentary notes.
The court believes that entitling one of the actors allowed to appoint CCU judges (in this case, the president) to "suspend a CCU judge" while the other two appointment actors (the Verkhovna Rada and the Congress of Judges) have no such right would mean a gross violation of the constitutional and legal status applied to all CCU judges. At the same time, it is this approach that was used when Presidential Decree No. 607/2020 of December 29, 2020, was issued, according to which six CCU judges may be subject to such a measure of ensuring criminal proceedings as "suspension", while the other 12 may not.
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The commentary notes that "from a constitutional and legal perspective" the decree in question is "null and void and cannot be enforced."
The issuance of the decree by the President of Ukraine "is in fact illegal interference in the activities of a CCU judge, obstruction of his official duties, which entails legal liability stipulated by law."
In Ukraine, criminal liability is provided for interference in the activities of a statesman (Article 344) and interference in the activities of the judiciary (Article 376), while Article 60 of the Constitution establishes that no one is obliged to fulfill clearly criminal instructions or orders. The issuance and execution of a clearly criminal instruction or order, in turn, entails criminal liability.
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