Secret ruling: how the SBU tried to gain access to the closed system of the Anti‑Corruption Court and could have learned...

Secret ruling: how the SBU tried to gain access to the closed system of the Anti‑Corruption Court and could have learned about NABU and SAP plans

Thanks to a court ruling in an unrelated case, the SBU tried to gain access to the closed system of the High Anti‑Corruption Court (HACC), which, among other things, stores detectives’ motions for searches and other covert investigative actions.

This could have opened up a database for service employees revealing the plans and actions of anti‑corruption bodies. The timing of this story coincided with high‑profile NABU and SAP operations — “Midas,” “Forrest Gump,” “Themis,” and “Carthage.” So if the security service had been “successful,” it could have learned about NABU investigations into SBU employees.

Skhemy managed to review the text of the closed ruling of the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv. Journalists analyzed it and describe a scenario that could have undermined the independence of the entire anti‑corruption system.

The pretext for requesting access to the closed HACC system was a complaint by a defendant in another NABU case — the former head of SETAM, Viktor Vyshniov — about the assignment of judges. This case was assigned to the SBU by court order; SBU officers initially asked for access only to the part of the database related to Vyshniov’s case. But later they applied again — requesting a copy of the entire database for more than a year.

In addition, journalists identified which SBU investigators were behind the mentioned motion — they are officers of the 3-th department of the 1-th directorate of pre‑trial investigation of the Main Investigation Department of the SBU. Relatives of one of them live in the occupied territory and hold Russian passports, and another does not own housing but regularly orders deliveries to an elite settlement near Kyiv.

Read the new piece here