The Kyiv Court of Appeal has overturned a ruling by Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court that barred the publication of an investigation into the real estate holdings of Oleksandr Sukhachov, the brother of Oleksii Sukhachov, director of the State Bureau of Investigation.
Slidstvo.Info reported that the ban had been lifted. The ruling was successfully appealed by journalists from Slidstvo.Info and the Anti-Corruption Action Center, which prepared the joint investigation. The appellate court issued its decision on Wednesday, September 23.
In July, it became known that the Pechersk Court had prohibited journalists from disseminating information about the assets, transactions and investments of the SBI director’s brother. Despite the ban, the investigation was published by a number of Ukrainian media outlets.
The report said that between 2018 and 2020, Oleksandr Sukhachov became the owner of 143 properties in two residential complexes in Kharkiv. The authors of the investigation compared the price of some of the properties to the cost of a smartphone.
Positions of the lawyer and the ACC
Media lawyer and attorney in the case Oksana Maksymeniuk considers the reversal of the previous ruling important because, in her assessment, it was aimed at restricting freedom of speech. In her view, this should halt further attempts to ban journalistic materials, including high-profile investigations.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center said it considers Judge Serhii Vovk’s ruling “an absolutely arbitrary decision.” The ACC also suggested that its purpose may have been to test a tool for banning the publication of other investigations.
