The HACC Appeals Chamber partially granted a motion filed by defendant lawyer Oleksii Nosov and overturned the fine it had imposed on him. On August 3, 2026, the Appeals Chamber fined him for failing to appear at a hearing.
Nosov did not appear at the October 16, 2026 hearing either, instead filing a motion for the case to be heard in his absence. The prosecutor said the appeal could proceed without Nosov because the appeals had been filed by the defense. He stressed, however, that under the verdict Nosov is required to appear when summoned by the court, that he is a qualified lawyer who knows the procedure well, and that leaving the country and living abroad do not release him from this obligation.
The court decided to continue the hearing without Nosov.
The parties then moved on to motions. Among other things, the prosecutor asked the court to forfeit the UAH 1.1 million bail to the state and to change the preventive measure to detention without the alternative of bail.
According to the prosecution, Nosov is evading justice: on May 20, 2026, he left on a business trip to Poland and never returned to Ukraine. On June 9, the court handed down a guilty verdict, and in August it emerged that the defendant had obtained a new passport and a permanent residence permit in Portugal. His wife also left the country after the verdict was announced. Before that, she had crossed the border five times in a single day, and ultimately stayed abroad.
Since these motions cannot be heard without the defendant present, the court postponed them and summoned Nosov and the persons who posted his bail to the next hearing.
The defense's position
The defense then continued presenting its appeal. At the August 3 hearing, one of Nosov’s lawyers had argued for overturning the verdict and ordering a retrial at first instance.
At this hearing, another of Nosov’s defense attorneys continued the argument on the merits of the appeal.
She pointed to:
- the incomplete examination of the case by the first-instance court, which refused to question witnesses Frolova and Shcherban; she asked for them to be questioned on appeal;
- the classified identity of the complainant and NABU agent “Petrenko”;
- the refusal to order a forensic voice examination. The defense attorney argued the court had no grounds to deny the defense’s request, which was meant to establish whether the voice of the person in the courtroom actually belonged to the same individual who had negotiated with Nosov at a restaurant;
- signs of entrapment by detectives, since “Petrenko” admitted during questioning that he was a former detective and had an acquaintance at NABU, whom he met before his complaint was officially registered;
- violations of law in applying special confiscation to the $100,000.
She asked the court to overturn the verdict and close the proceedings.
The prosecution's position
The prosecutor rejected the appeal’s arguments in full and insisted the first-instance verdict was lawful. He also argued that questioning the witnesses would serve no purpose, since Nosov’s actions in their interests had been confirmed by other evidence (correspondence, a laptop, records of covert investigative actions), and the prosecution does not dispute that connection.
On the entrapment claims, the prosecutor cited ECHR case law. He noted that a person who denies committing the offense at all cannot claim entrapment, and that the bribe was Nosov’s initiative. On April 9, 2024, Nosov messaged “Petrenko”; the next day they met, and the defendant personally handed over a step-by-step plan for closing the proceedings in exchange for a bribe; only on April 11 did the agent file a complaint with NABU.
As for witness “Petrenko” and the refused examination, the prosecutor said an authorized HACC staff member verified the witness’s identity before every hearing against original documents and a passport in his real name, after which he was questioned under a cover name in line with the law on the safety of participants in criminal proceedings. Nosov and his lawyers personally questioned Petrenko over several hearings spanning a month and a half and never questioned his identity, the prosecutor noted.
To recap, on June 9, 2026, the HACC found Oleksii Nosov guilty of offering a bribe to NABU and SAPO officials and sentenced him to 4.5 years in prison with a 3-year ban on practicing law. According to the investigation, the lawyer offered NABU and SAPO officers a $200,000 bribe to reclassify the charges against Alliance Bank board chair Yuliia Frolova and transfer her case to other pretrial investigation bodies.
