Supreme Court imposes restriction on unauthorized interference in personal life

On 28 March a plenary session was held of Ukraine’s Supreme Court which considered, among other things, a draft Resolution “On some issues regarding the use by Ukrainian courts of legislation when issuing permits for temporarily restricting citizens’ constitutional rights during investigative operations, detective inquiry and pre-trial investigations” (second reading).

The Plenary affirmed in their Resolution that when carrying out investigative operations, detective inquiry and pre-trial investigations, court orders must be obtained not only for intercepting and recording telephone conversations, but also for receiving information about telephone conversations which took place with respect to subscribers and how long they lasted.

According to Judge of the Supreme Court Criminal Chamber Vasyl Filatov, this addition to the draft Resolution will give more guarantees to individuals against unauthorized interference in their personal life.

From information released from the Supreme Court

Most discussion was over the question of whether an application for such investigative operations needed to be agreed with the prosecutor’s office.

The plenary session agreed that according to current legislation, such applications need only be coordinated with the prosecutor’s office where the head or deputy head of the relevant department of investigative operations to check applications or reports about crimes before a criminal investigation has been initiated; an application from the investigation to carry out measures foreseen in the Criminal Procedure Code, and an application from the detective inquiry unit to carry out such measures after a criminal investigation has been initiated.  In other cases, legislation does not require coordination of such measures with the prosecutor’s office.