The former head of the CCU illegally crossed the border with the assistance of police and border guards: SBI files suspicions
Law enforcement officers exposed a criminal group that organized the illegal crossing of the state border for the former head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in March 2022. Border guards and the deputy head of the district police department in Zakarpattia region were involved in this scheme. About this reported Office of the Prosecutor General and the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI).
The law enforcement officers do not officially name the ex-head of the KSU, but there is a possibility that it is Oleksandr Tupytskyi. In March 2022, he was spotted in Vienna, although there is no record of him officially crossing the border. Already in May, Tupytskyi was declared an international wanted person, and at the end of July, the Podilsky Court of Kyiv chose a preventive measure for him in the form of detention in absentia. This creates the legal basis for the initiation of extradition proceedings from Austria.
According to the investigation data, an organized group engaged in illegal transportation of people through checkpoints in the Berehiv region of Transcarpathia, bypassing border control. The organizer of the scheme was a policeman who informed people trying to avoid mobilization about ways to cross the border illegally and coordinated drivers. The policeman personally controlled that the border guards let cars through without checking passengers’ documents and inspecting the cars.
Border guards involved in the scheme checked only the driver’s documents and entered only him into the database, hiding the presence of passengers. After crossing the border, the driver handed over control to one of the passengers and returned to Ukraine on foot, receiving a reward from the policeman.
According to this scheme, the former head of the Constitutional Court also left Ukraine in March 2022 in order to avoid criminal liability for a number of crimes in the sphere of justice. Together with him, two more citizens crossed the border illegally.
At this time, the former head of the KSU has been charged under the article on the illegal transportation of citizens across the state border with a prior conspiracy by a group of persons (Part 2 of Article 332 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). Suspicions have also been raised against a law enforcement officer and a border guard under the third part of the same article. The investigation is ongoing, and investigators are working to identify other possible participants in the criminal scheme from among law enforcement officers.
