Former chief of Ukraine’s Supreme Court Knyazev sentenced to five years for bribery

The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine (HACC) has approved a plea agreement and sentenced former Supreme Court chairman Vsevolod Knyazev to five years in prison for systematically accepting bribes in exchange for predetermined court rulings.

This was reported by Novyny.LIVE, citing data from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

The plea agreement was concluded between prosecutors from the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and Knyazev himself. The former judge fully admitted guilt in the crime committed and agreed to provide detailed incriminating testimony against other participants and organizers of the corruption scheme. Knyazev was detained at the moment of receiving unlawful benefit in May 2023.

In addition to imprisonment, the court ordered the full confiscation of property belonging to Knyazev. The state will forcibly seize more than $200,000 of his personal savings into the budget, as well as more than approximately €1 million that was directly involved in the bribery case. The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office emphasized that, thanks to the agreement with the defendant, the state budget will in total receive more than approximately €2.2 million.

Furthermore, Knyazev agreed to transfer approximately €952,000 to the accounts of the Come Back Alive charitable foundation to meet the needs of military personnel on the front line. Some reports cite a figure of approximately €21,000, which is being clarified in the final calculations.

This is not the first legal proceeding against Knyazev. Novyny.LIVE previously reported that in December 2023, the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv found him in violation of anti-corruption legislation — establishing that the former court head had ignored statutory limits on receiving gifts. As a result of that hearing, he was fined approximately €49 and a gift amount of approximately €18,000 was confiscated.

NABU also recorded other episodes of illegal enrichment by Knyazev. In particular, he lived in a 133-square-meter apartment in central Kyiv, in the Lypky district, paying only 1,000 hryvnias per month in rent — significantly below market value.

A separate matter concerns the bail amount. The initial sum of approximately €2.1 million, announced on May 18, 2023, lasted less than a month: the HACC promptly reduced it first to 75 million hryvnias, and in early autumn to approximately €1.1 million. The final reduction took place on January 30, 2024, when the investigating judge approved a sum of approximately €352,000 — meaning that over eight months of detention, the bail was reduced by nearly six times.