On February 22, 2024, the HACC found Olena Polishchuk, a former official at the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, guilty of accepting a $150,000 bribe and sentenced her to eight years in prison.

As of 2016, Olena Polishchuk headed the Division for Control over the Efficient Use of Property at the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, and later served as acting director of the Department for State Property Management.

According to the investigation, she used her official position to devise a scheme to obtain an unlawful benefit from a businessman interested in acquiring the property complex of the State Agricultural Enterprise Oberih, which was undergoing bankruptcy and liquidation proceedings.

Since the disposal of state property in bankruptcy cases required the Ministry of Agrarian Policy's mandatory approval of both the list of assets in the liquidation estate and the auction organizer, Polishchuk assured the businessman that she could secure a favorable outcome on these matters for a fee.

These communications ran from December 2015 to August 2016. During meetings at Kyiv venues, including the Kupidon restaurant, Polishchuk demanded $150,000, writing the sum on a napkin. She explained that she was the “link” between the buyer and the ministry's leadership, and insisted that once she was appointed acting director of the department, resolving the matter would become much simpler.

The defendant gave the businessman detailed instructions on the stages of transferring the money and proposed options for cashless payment through offshore schemes, but the parties ultimately agreed on a cash handover. To demonstrate that she was serious, Polishchuk brought in a third person (whose case materials were severed into separate proceedings), who showed the businessman a photocopy of a draft letter approving the liquidation estate at the Salut Hotel.

The final stage allegedly took place after the meeting at the hotel. The businessman drove Polishchuk to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy building on Khreshchatyk Street. In the ministry's inner courtyard, she opened the trunk of her Mitsubishi Outlander herself, and the businessman placed a bag of simulated banknotes inside. Immediately after receiving it, Polishchuk returned to her office and arranged for the registration of an incoming letter from the enterprise's liquidator approving a commodity exchange as the auction organizer. That same evening she was detained by NABU detectives, and the money was seized from her car during a search.

Her actions were classified under Article 368(4) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The HACC sentenced her to eight years in prison with a three-year ban on holding certain positions. The court also ordered the partial confiscation of her property, including the Mitsubishi Outlander and a land plot in Kyiv Region; at the same time, it took into account the convicted woman's pensionable age and left her ownership of her sole residence — an apartment in Fastiv. The verdict also confirmed that the defense's entrapment theory had not been proven, relying on the results of covert investigative actions and messenger correspondence.

The HACC Appeals Chamber overturned the guilty verdict against Olena Polishchuk and ordered a new hearing before the court of first instance, citing substantial procedural violations, in particular that the decision had been taken by an unlawfully composed court. The panel found that, after one of the first-instance judges was replaced, the trial was not restarted from the beginning despite the defense's objections, and that a motion to recuse the judges was unlawfully left unconsidered — which breached the principles of the direct examination of evidence and of the immutability of the court's composition. In effect, the verdict was overturned for breaching the principle of immediacy — a separate piece on this principle and what it means is available on the HACC Decided platform.

The case is therefore currently being reheard by the HACC.