Case description
On December 15, 2017, the Kyivskyi District Court of Odesa found Maksym Halkin and Kuzma Ivanov, two SSU officers, guilty of extorting USD 70,000 from the abbot of the monastery that no proceedings would be opened against him, for which there were no grounds.
In November 2015, Halkin and Ivanov, working in the main department for the protection of national statehood of the SSU Office in Odesa region, decided to extort USD 500,000 in bribes from Father Diodor, abbot of the Holy Iveron Monastery in Odesa, through blackmail. They threatened that employees of the Kyiv SSU could allegedly open a case against Diodor for illegally re-registering land from a parishioner to a monastery with a fictitious certificate.
In exchange for this money, they promised to keep quiet about the dirt on Diodor and not to open criminal proceedings against him. At the same time, the defendants did not have any materials that would allow them to form a case against the abbot of the monastery. Diodor himself simultaneously appealed to the military prosecutor's office.
Later, they agreed on the amount of USD 70,000, but Diodor was able to bring in only USD 50,000. Halkin and Ivanov were detained immediately after committing the crime on the territory of the monastery.
The Odesa Court changed the classification of the actions of both men to Article 15, part 2, Article 190, part 4 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (fraud). The previous indictment mentioned Article 368, part 4 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Both Halkin and Ivanov were sentenced to 5 years in prison with confiscation of all their property. The SAPO prosecutor filed a complaint against this decision because, in her opinion, the punishment should have been harsher and the qualifications different.
The HACC Appeals Chamber upheld the verdict, and the Supreme Court did so too.
