We demand to provide access to state register of court decisions

After the large-scale armed aggression against Ukraine began and martial law was imposed, access to some state registers was closed or significantly restricted. Among such registers was the Unified State Register of Court Decisions (USRCD) – the only source for monitoring information on the progress of criminal cases, in particular regarding high-profile and socially important areas, such as corruption crimes, persecution of civil society activists, prosecution for collaborationism, etc.

After access to USRCD was restored in June, it turned out that almost all criminal convictions for the past three years had been removed from the register by an unknown and arbitrary principle. For example, in Kharkiv region section, there are only 30 sentences left in the court register for 2022, and only 19 for the entire year 2021. If we are to believe the court register, then all the courts of Kharkiv region passed only four sentences for the entire year 2020. For comparison: as of now, the court register shows that the Kharkiv region courts passed 2,073 sentences in 2018 and 2,267 – in 2017.

But the documents disappear based not only on territorial grounds. This is clearly seen in the example of cases of persecution of activists and volunteers. Experts of the Human Rights Centre ZMINA monitor open sources regarding these cases. The Internet mentions numerous cases of detention and searches of volunteers under Art. 201-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the prosecutor’s offices report on the official websites that sentences were passed, but the USRCD contains no court decisions in these cases.

Another example is the prosecution for collaborationism. The Prosecutor General’s Office states that 3,671 criminal cases were opened. However, the USRCD contains only 39 documents.

The problem of court decisions that disappear from the USRCD is not a new one. According to a study by the DEJURE Foundation, court decisions in high-profile cases (for example, the case on the special confiscation of $1.5 billion of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych or the case of the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet) disappeared from the court register, were classified, or did not get into it at all. And those in the register are not available for viewing. However, the problem became more acute after martial law was imposed in Ukraine.

According to the data of the State Enterprise “Information Judicial Systems”, more than a million documents were removed from public access in the state register of court decisions: this is explained by work on the classification of data that cannot be

disclosed in wartime. However, it is difficult to agree that such a large-scale “mopping up” of the register is dictated by the conditions of martial law since it is impossible to imagine what secret information a conviction for theft in 2020 or a corruption offense in 2021 contains if this information was not a secret back yesterday and there is no secret about the 2019 sentences at least now. Tomorrow, other sentences may also be withdrawn.

Concealing information in the court register is another manifestation of the negative trend of the closedness of authorities during the war and a step back from democratic values. This makes civil society control over the activities of the authorities impossible and does not contribute to the victory of Ukraine in any way as it only undermines the trust of civil society in the authorities while trust is crucial during the war.

Therefore, we call on the High Council of Justice and the State Judicial Administration to stop the negative practice of restricting access to documents contained in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions. It is necessary to restore access to the sentences passed (taking into account the necessary requirements for the secrecy of court decisions concerning state secrets) and to ensure the timely entry of procedural documents into the register.

Signed by:

NGO “Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center”

Human Rights Centre ZMINA

CHESNO Movement

Human Rights Center “Action”

Advocacy Advisory Panel

DEJURE Foundation

Institute of Legislative Ideas

NGO “Ukrainian Institute for Human Rights”

Anti-Corruption Headquarters

Open Dialogue Foundation

NGO “Human Rights Association “RIGHT CAUSE”

Crimean Human Rights Group

NGO “Incubator of Democratic Initiatives”

Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union

Transparency International Ukraine

Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group

NGO “Center for Journalistic Investigations “Force of Truth”

Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law

Cherkasy Human Rights Center

NGO “People’s Defense”