Zelenskyi’s Office explained what the president will do with the CCU decision

Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Office of President, explained how Volodymyr Zelenskyi can act on the Constitutional Court's decision to cancel the electronic declaration system.

Ukraine 24 reports. 

"… The President is intolerant of corruption. When the CCU, for some reason – we won't analyze the reason, while a format of a dialogue in society, is ongoing – we are trying to understand the reasons that motivated the CCU to make this decision in an extreme urgent way, which is clearly contrary to society's expectations. So, the president must respond to what provokes society to mass protests. That brings us back to where we have already left," the adviser said.

According to Podoliak, we can justify the meeting of the National Security and Defense Council in this case.

"The president's logic is very simple. He is obliged to call a session of the National Security and Defense Council with many participants and discuss the issue when such risks to national security arise… this meeting should give us a political and legal assessment of what the CCU is doing," Podoliak said.

The adviser to the head of the President's Office said the president could use several tools.

"The president has the tools. The first tool is package law drafts, which can amend the laws that served as the basis for the CCU's ruling and return electronic declarations for officials of any rank. The second direction is the CCU, which adopts provocative decisions and creates an atmosphere of distrust in the state as an institution with which society has agreed on new rules of the game. It is necessary to reform the CCU. We need different laws governing the CCU," Podoliak said.

However, he called the situation "practically hopeless."

"Today, if we see that the CCU makes some strange decisions, and these decisions may have a conflict of interest, i.e. they are made in the interests of a political group or individual entities, then a CCU judge can be made to resign only by the CCU itself with two-thirds of the votes. It is a practically hopeless situation," the adviser said.

On October 27, the Constitutional Court repealed Art. 366-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine on criminal liability for entering inaccurate data in the declaration, and also declared the powers of the NAPC to control and verify declarations, their round-the-clock access to the register of declarations, and lifestyle monitoring unconstitutional.

The NAPC stated that the judges made the relevant decision in their own interests. According to the anti-corruption agency, two members of the CCU entered inaccurate data in their declarations and are now probably trying to avoid responsibility.

In turn, the Constitutional Court stated about "constant pressure" from anti-corruption bodies.