The Supreme Court recognized the accusations made by Vitaliy Shabunin and the CPC against Gizo Uglava as evaluative judgments and personal opinions.
30 January 18:55
The Supreme Court has finally put an end to the case in which Vitaliy Shabunin accused former First Deputy Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Gizo Uglava of leaking information from criminal proceedings. This was reported by Olga Prosyanyuk, managing partner of AVER LEX, on Facebook, according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
According to her, according to the Court’s decision, the information disseminated by the Anti-Corruption Center and Vitaliy Shabunin personally “is only their personal opinion and evaluative judgments.”
The lawyer recalled that earlier, on November 4, 2024, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv recognized as untrue the allegations that Gizo Uglava “leaked” information to persons involved in criminal proceedings and “failed” a polygraph test. The court also ordered the CPC and Vitaliy Shabunin to publicly refute the false information within 10 days of the decision coming into force.
On January 28, 2025, the Kyiv Court of Appeals upheld this decision.
According to Olga Prosianuk, in all three courts, the CPC and Vitaliy Shabunin were unable to provide any evidence to support their allegations.
The criminal proceedings also found no evidence of Gizo Uglava’s involvement in the leak of any information.
Thus, the Supreme Court confirmed the legality and validity of the claims and recognized that the information disseminated by the CPC and Vitaliy Shabunin was merely evaluative judgments or criticism of the activities of a public figure.
“I am personally impressed by the decisions of the courts of first and appellate instance, which established that the information disseminated is unreliable, negative, and presented in the form of assertions (these arguments were confirmed, in particular, by the conclusion of a forensic linguistic expert), and therefore subject to refutation.
The Supreme Court found that the information disseminated is a subjective assessment and assumptions of the defendants and, therefore, is not subject to refutation,” Olga Prosyanyuk noted.
She emphasized that the main thing, in any case, is that the courts have established that all the information disseminated by Shabunin and his NGO “CPK” regarding Gizo Uglava is their personal assumptions, not based on any evidence.
