Case description
On June 14, 2023, the HACC found Mykola Chaus, former judge of the Dniprovskyi District Court of Kyiv, guilty. He asked for USD 100 thousand for a suspended sentence for a person accused of trading in diphenhydramine. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with additional penalties.
On October 14, 2002, Mykola Chaus was appointed judge of the Dniprovskyi District Court of Kyiv. However, for most of his time in office, the name of this judge remained unnoticeable. Chaus was talked about when he was considering a motion to change an interim measure for Hennadii Korban in December 2015.
What happened in the Chaus case?
Between 2015 and 2016, Chaus was investigating a case involving pensioner Svitlana Sasevych for the illegal acquisition, storage, and sale of poisonous, potent substances, or narcotic drugs.
In August 2016, NABU detectives exposed Judge Chaus while receiving a USD 150,000 bribe for a suspended sentence against Sasevych for trading in diphenhydramine. The money was found in two glass jars, one of which was dug up on the judge's land plot and the other in his car.
By the time the Verkhovna Rada allowed the judge to be detained, he had already been in Moldova and applied for asylum there. In April 2021, it became known that the ex-judge had been kidnapped in Chisinau. In May, a video appeared in which Chaus said he was safe, but until July 2021, there was no public information about his whereabouts until the judge appeared in the Mazurivka village, Vinnytsia region, wearing only his underwear.
Then Chaus immediately contacted the SSU and reported that he had been the victim of kidnapping, imprisonment, and other crimes. Chaus pleaded not guilty; in court, he claimed that he was provoked by law enforcement officers.
What is Chaus's version of events?
According to Chaus, at the end of February 2016, Svitlana Sasevych’s lawyer came to the ex-judge's office to try to talk about the case. Then he was visited by Taras Oksiuta, judge of the Solomianskyi District Court, who asked to meet with his friend.
When he arrived at the meeting, Chaus discovered that the friend was Diana Polishchuk, his old acquaintance, former colleague from the Sviatoshynskyi District Court, who told him that she was the daughter of the accused pensioner. There, they allegedly discussed Sasevych's health, then Polishchuk asked to resolve the issue for money, and Chaus allegedly refused.
In March 2016, Chaus met for the first time with Oleksandr Polishchuk, also a former colleague, Diana's ex-husband, and a secret agent of the NABU. According to Chaus, during the meetings, Polishchuk tried to link the lending of money to the resolution of the Sasevych case. According to Chaus, Polishchuk had a personal interest and wanted to get a position in the NABU.
Chaus claimed a provocation by Polishchuk. The court found that in another part of the conversation, the NABU agent did go beyond his powers and with his statements encouraged Chaus to continue his criminal activities, and offered to personally remove the obstacles.
After Chaus's detention and interrogation by the NABU, he was allegedly taken from his apartment and handed over to an unknown person in one of Kyiv's underground parking lots, who took him to an apartment in Irpin. Then he ended up in another apartment in Bucha, and then in Moldova. Chaus insisted that Ukrainian intelligence officers were involved in his return to Ukraine, allegedly wanting to obtain testimony against Ukrainian political figures.
The court assessed this testimony critically and considered his stories to be false, for the most part, provided in order to avoid criminal liability for the offense.
HACC judges agreed that Chaus asked for, but did not demand a bribe. In March 2016, he told Diana Polishchuk that for USD 100,000 he was ready to adopt a decision against the pensioner without any real punishment. Subsequently, the ex-judge resorted to some conspiracy, and then refused to do anything at all, because, according to him, he had problems in court.
But this does not cancel the crime. Therefore, the HACC charged the ex-judge with Art. 368, part 4 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, changing the qualification from extortion to asking for a bribe. Receiving USD 150,000 from Polishchuk was recognized as a provocation.
The court sentenced Chaus to 10 years in prison with confiscation of all property and a 3-year ban on holding certain positions. He was taken into custody in the courtroom. Immediately after the verdict was announced, Chaus said that he considered it unjustified and later filed an appeal.
