The SAPO Commission Has Appealed to the Prosecutor General Regarding Oleksii Shevchuk: What It Means Legally and What Happens Next

On September 1, the Selection Commission for the position of Deputy Head of the SAPO submitted a proposal to the Prosecutor General to remove Oleksii Shevchuk early from his position as a Commission member. Below, we explain what the Commission’s Rules of Procedure and the Law provide for at each of the stages ahead.

Step 1 — This is a proposal, not a decision

The Commission’s Rules of Procedure and the Law of Ukraine on the Prosecutor’s Office distinguish between two separate actions:

• the Commission has the right only to submit a proposal to the Prosecutor General for the early termination of one of its members’ powers;
• the decision on the termination of powers itself is taken solely by the Prosecutor General, who in doing so also designates a replacement member of the Selection Commission.

This means that, as of today, no legal consequences for Oleksii Shevchuk’s status have arisen. Formally, he remains a member of the Commission with the full scope of his rights — including the right to vote, to take part in meetings, and to receive all materials. The composition of the Commission provided for by law (six persons) has not changed as of today.

This is an important point, because it means that any argument about the Commission’s “lack of authority” on account of incomplete membership currently has not the slightest factual basis, since the composition remains complete until the Prosecutor General takes his own decision.

Step 2 — The law sets no deadline for the Prosecutor General to respond

Article 29-1 of the Law sets no time limit within which the Prosecutor General must respond to the Commission’s proposal. It does, however, provide that, where grounds exist for the early termination of a Selection Commission member’s powers, the Prosecutor General takes a decision on the early termination of that member’s powers and, in doing so, designates a replacement member of the Selection Commission in accordance with the procedure established by this part for designating members of the Selection Commission.

Step 3 — If the Prosecutor General decides on a removal

The Law requires that, simultaneously with the decision to terminate powers, the Prosecutor General designate a replacement candidate — under the same procedure as for forming the Commission as a whole (nominations from the Council of Prosecutors). That amounts to up to 20 working days for the nomination of candidates (by the Council of Prosecutors) and a further up to 10 working days for appointment by the Prosecutor General. 

For reference, when filling the “prosecutorial” quota of the Selection Commission, the Council of Prosecutors began compiling the list of candidates on November 27, and the Prosecutor General actually appointed the commission members (one of whom was Oleksii Shevchuk) on December 23 — so the process took less than a month. 

How well-founded is the claim of the Commission’s “lack of authority” and a “suspended competition”?

Shevchuk himself has already claimed that the Commission is supposedly without authority, and that further competition procedures, including the acceptance of candidates’ documents, cannot therefore be regarded as legitimate until the question of the Commission’s full composition is resolved. Let us examine this claim point by point.

First, it is premature at the level of facts alone: no decision to change the Commission’s composition yet exists. The composition is the same as before, including the very author of this argument. The assertion of an “incomplete composition” describes a hypothetical future situation, not what is happening now.

Second, even if the Prosecutor General were to decide on a removal in the future, and the appointment of a replacement were to drag on (on precedent, for several weeks), this would not necessarily mean the paralysis of the Commission’s work. The Rules of Procedure and Article 29-1 of the Law itself separately set the threshold for taking decisions at a meeting — the participation of at least four of the six members (including no fewer than two members from the “international” quota) and, where such a quorum cannot be assembled within 10 days or across two consecutive meetings, even three members. 

These provisions are designed precisely for situations in which the commission temporarily operates without its full composition; otherwise they would make no sense. A comparative analysis of the work of similar selection commissions — for NABU, the Economic Security Bureau, and ARMA — shows that the legislator has consistently built exactly this logic into all such competitions.

This means that even in a hypothetical future period of vacancy, when a replacement has not yet been appointed, the Commission most likely retains a legal basis to continue holding meetings provided a quorum is present.

Third, as regards the acceptance of candidates’ documents: this stage is an administrative procedure whose deadlines (from 9:00 a.m. on August 19 to 6:00 p.m. on September 21) were set and published in advance on the basis of a separate announcement by the Commission in accordance with paragraphs 9.1–9.3 of the Rules of Procedure. Neither the Rules of Procedure nor the Law ties the validity of this document intake to the Commission’s current personal composition. The assertion that the submission of documents “cannot be regarded as a proper continuation of the competition procedure” is not based on any specific provision of the Rules of Procedure or the Law.