The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court denied Oleksiy Pukach the right to review the verdict in the case of the murder of Georgy Gongadze

The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court refused to open proceedings on the application of former Interior Ministry General Oleksiy Pukach, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze. Thus, the court left the previous court decisions unchanged, and the ruling is final and not subject to appeal.

Pukach requested to review the ruling of the Cassation Criminal Court of the Supreme Court dated July 2, 2021, which confirmed the legality of the verdict of the courts of previous instances. As a reminder, in January 2013, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Currently, the convict is serving his sentence in Chortkiv Penitentiary Institution No. 26.

In his application, Pukach claimed that during the consideration of the case, the courts committed significant violations of criminal procedural legislation. Initially, he insisted that the sentence should have been 15 years of imprisonment, and also claimed that his right to a pension had been unjustly deprived.

Subsequently, the convicted person changed his legal position and requested that the Supreme Court’s decision be overturned and the case be remanded for a new appeal. In his opinion, the court of first instance should have released him from criminal liability due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, since the statutory period had passed from the moment the journalist was murdered until the verdict entered into force.

However, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court concluded that the applicant’s arguments actually amounted to a disagreement with the assessment of the evidence, the circumstances of the case established by the courts, the legal qualification of his actions, and the court decisions adopted.

The court emphasized that such arguments could not be grounds for a second cassation review of the criminal proceedings. In addition, there are no newly discovered or exceptional circumstances in the case that, according to the law, allow the Grand Chamber to review final court decisions. Such grounds include, in particular, the establishment of the fact of falsification of evidence, the provision of knowingly false testimony, or the decision of the European Court of Human Rights on the violation of international obligations by Ukraine during the consideration of the case.

Thus, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court finally denied Oleksiy Pukach the right to review the sentence.

Recall that journalist Heorhiy Gongadze was kidnapped and killed in September 2000. His decapitated body was discovered near Kyiv a month and a half later. The court established that the direct perpetrator of the murder was Lieutenant General of the militia Oleksiy Pukach. Former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Mykola Protasov, Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych were convicted in the case together with him. Protasov died in prison, and Kostenko and Popovych have already served their sentences.