On December 10, 2024, the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the HACC, which found Moldovan citizen Serhii Nerukh guilty of attempting to bribe the military prosecutor of the Southern Region of Ukraine.
Ukrainian border guards in the Danube River water area detained the Sky Moon ship under the Tanzanian flag, which left the closed port of Sevastopol with a cargo of soda, produced by the occupied soda plant in Armiansk. It was the first vessel confiscated for violating the rules for visiting the temporarily occupied peninsula.
Serhii Nerukh, the co-owner of the cargo, a businessman, offered USD 75,000 to Maksym Yakubovskyi, the military prosecutor of the Southern Region, to help lift the seizure of the vessel and cargo, but the prosecutor refused it, reported the attempted bribery to the Prosecutor General's Office, and transferred the money received to the pre-trial investigation bodies. After that, Nerukh was detained.
In 2021, the HACC found Nerukh guilty and sentenced him to 5 years in prison. The Appeals Chamber upheld this decision, and the Supreme Court finally confirmed its legality. The bribe amount was confiscated in favor of the state.
The Supreme Court's ruling is final and cannot be appealed.