November 21, 2025

On November 20, 2025, during the public part of the plenary session in the form of written proceedings, the Grand Chamber deliberated the case on the constitutional petition of the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of certain provisions of Articles 309 and 392 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine (hereinafter, the “Code”).

During the plenary session, the Judge-Rapporteur in the case, Vasyl Lemak, judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, informed that the Supreme Court, on the basis of the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of September 12, 2025 , had appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to verify the compliance of certain provisions of Articles 309 and 392 of the Code with Articles 3 and 21 of the Constitution of Ukraine in conjunction with Article 41.4, 41.5 and Articles 8, 55, 129 of the Constitution of Ukraine, noting that they make it impossible to appeal against the decision of an investigating judge or court, issued in accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 100.6, 100.7 and “Articles 170-173 of the Code”.

The Judge-Rapporteur noted that this appeal was preceded by a submission by the judges of the Supreme Court to the Cassation Criminal Court on April 8, 2025 to the Supreme Court regarding the circumstances specified in the decision of the Supreme Court, composed of a panel of judges of the Third Judicial Chamber of the Cassation Criminal Court, dated March 27, 2025, in the relevant case.

The author of the petition asserts that the inability of a person to appeal the decision of the investigating judge to transfer property for sale, on the basis of paragraph 2 of Article 100.6 of the Code (material evidence “shall be transferred for sale with the written consent of the owner, and in the absence thereof, by decision of the investigating judge or court, if this is possible without prejudice to the criminal proceedings”) creates conditions that may lead to serious irreversible consequences for the person in the form of unjustified termination of their property rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Ukraine.

In its constitutional petition, the Supreme Court also notes that “although the ultimate of material evidence in criminal proceedings during the pre-trial investigation rests with the investigating judge, whose powers include exercising judicial control over the observance of the rights, freedoms, and interests of persons in criminal proceedings in the manner prescribed by this Code, this does not exclude the possibility of judicial error in resolving this issue and the need for its timely correction before the termination of ownership rights.”

The Judge-Rapporteur informed that in order to ensure a full and objective deliberation of the case and the delivery of justified decision by the Court, he had sent requests to the President of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Office of the Prosecutor General, the National Agency of Ukraine for the Identification, Search, and Management of Assets Derived from Corruption and Other Crimes, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, as well as a number of educational and scientific institutions. The Legal Department of the Secretariat of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine was also instructed to prepare an opinion on the merits of the constitutional petition and other information and analytical materials. The judges will be informed of the content of the positions expressed in the in-camera part of the plenary session.

After examining the case materials in the public part of the plenary session, the Court proceeded to the in-camera deliberations for a decision.

The plenary session of the Grand Chamber was attended by the representative of the subject entitled to file the constitutional petition, First Deputy Head of the Supreme Court Administration Rasim Babanly, Permanent Representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Maksym Dyrdin, and Representative of the President of Ukraine to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Serhiy Dembovskyi.

The video recording of the plenary session is available on the Court’s official website in the Section “Archive of Video Broadcasts of Sessions”.