SAPO Selection Commission Recommends That the Prosecutor General Recall Oleksii Shevchuk as a Commission Member

On September 1, 2026, the Selection Commission for the competition for administrative positions in the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office held a meeting. The sole item on the agenda was whether the conduct of Commission member Oleksii Shevchuk complied with the requirements of the Commission’s Rules of Procedure. Following the discussion, five of the Commission’s six members supported an appeal to the Prosecutor General proposing the early termination of Shevchuk’s powers; only Shevchuk voted against.

The meeting was broadcast live.

How it all began

According to Laura Stefan, on August 21 the Commission received a letter from NABU Director Kryvonos concerning Shevchuk. On August 26, without notifying the Commission in advance, Shevchuk held a press conference at which he accused NABU of interfering in the Commission’s work and appealed to law enforcement agencies, a number of international institutions, and representatives of foreign states.

It was precisely the fact and manner of this public reaction — undertaken without prior discussion within the Commission — that became the subject of the September 1 session. The Chair emphasized that the meeting did not concern any assessment of the content of NABU’s letter as such — though, judging by Oleksii Shevchuk’s subsequent conduct, he did not agree with that framing.

An attempt to change the agenda

At the start of the meeting, Shevchuk insisted on adding several further items to the agenda: the NABU Director’s alleged “interference” in his work; an interview given by the head of the SAPO which, in his view, undermined confidence in the competition; a motion of no confidence in the Head of the Commission’s Secretariat; and the admission of eleven of his attorney-representatives to take part in the meeting. He also cited allegedly ongoing proceedings before the District Administrative Court of Kyiv which, he claimed, made it impossible to hold the meeting. 

We would add that a claim was indeed assigned on the afternoon of September 1 in case No. 320/35015/26, brought by Shevchuk against the Selection Commission. However, as of the date of the meeting, there is no information about any rulings issued in that case. 

In response to Shevchuk’s remark that he was unaware of the agenda proposals, Laura Stefan showed participants the email containing the agenda that had been circulated in advance to all Commission members, and stated that no one had prepared any additional materials. The other Commission members — Iryna Horban, Martin Ortner, Serhii Shmalenia, and Jens Madsen —spoke in turn against expanding the agenda, noting that these matters could be considered separately but could not substitute for the scheduled review. Shevchuk’s proposal was rejected by five members to one (Shevchuk himself).

A tense tone of discussion

The discussion was marked by a clash between Oleksii Shevchuk and Commission member Martin Ortner, who tried to stop Shevchuk when he refused for a prolonged period to yield the floor to others. In response, Shevchuk branded Ortner’s conduct “chauvinism” and demanded a public apology, repeatedly noting that he was in Kyiv during an air-raid alert while his family was on the road and in danger, and accusing his opponent of being in Austria at the time. Ortner subsequently apologized for raising his voice and interrupting.

Iryna Horban, summing up this part of the meeting, said: “I am very sorry that I feel ashamed of my colleagues.” She meant that she was ashamed of Oleksii Shevchuk’s conduct before their foreign colleagues and the viewers of the open broadcast.

These episodes were not directly the subject of the vote on Shevchuk, but they convey the atmosphere in which the decision was taken.

The Chair’s reasoning

Justifying the need for the review, Laura Stefan referred to several provisions of the Rules of Procedure concerning the avoidance of actions or statements that could discredit the Commission or harm its work, as well as the duty to take into account the public nature of one’s responsibilities and to act in the public interest, and the fact that the Commission is a collegial body.

She additionally noted that, under the Rules of Procedure, it is the Chair who represents the Commission in relations with the media. In her opinion, one member’s coming forward with a public statement on behalf of what is in fact a collegial body, without prior discussion, placed the other Commission members in a position where they had to react to an already-formed public stance rather than shape a common one.

The legal basis for the appeal to the Prosecutor General itself is the Commission’s right to propose the early termination of a member’s powers where the member fails to perform their duties or violates the Law of Ukraine on the Prosecutor’s Office, the Rules of Procedure, or the Commission’s decisions.

Shevchuk’s position

Oleksii Shevchuk insisted on the opposite reading of the Rules of Procedure. His arguments came down to the claim that he had the right to defend himself against alleged criminal offenses (namely, the supposed arbitrary conduct of Kryvonos, although, in our view, there are no indications of any actual offense there). He also observed that the Commission had gone five days without responding to the NABU Director’s letter (although, from the context of the meeting, we understood that Shevchuk himself had not raised this matter before the Commission), and that various court rulings (of which he had amassed a fair number) had established individual instances of inaccurate information. 

He further insisted that a Commission member and the Commission are essentially one and the same, so that any criticism directed at him constitutes “interference in the Commission’s work,” which entitles him to speak about it publicly.

In its final vote, the Commission did not agree with these arguments. We believe, however, Shevchuk’s entire conduct was aimed precisely at derailing the meeting and at numerous distortions of both the rules and the actual state of affairs, since Shevchuk, as already noted here:

• denied having seen the agenda — even though the Chair immediately displayed the email that everyone had received;
• demanded that 11 of his representatives be admitted, as if this were a court trial rather than a commission meeting;
• kept changing the subject — to the NABU letter, to the bomb shelter, to the Secretariat, to threats to complain to Austrian authorities;
• interrupted everyone, including the Chair — who had to mute his microphone;
• spent 15+ minutes demanding an apology from Martin Ortner, reproaching him for being an Austrian sitting out of range of the shelling;
• muddled his terms and contradicted himself: one moment he was “part of the Commission,” the next the Commission was supposed to protect him specifically; one moment the Commission’s powers extended only to selecting candidates, the next it was at fault for failing to protect Shevchuk.

The decision

The meeting’s agenda (in its original form, as proposed by the Chair) was approved by five members to one. 

Following the discussion of Shevchuk’s conduct, five Commission members voted in favor of an appeal to the Prosecutor General proposing the early recall of Oleksii Shevchuk from his position as a Commission member. Shevchuk himself voted against and called what had taken place at the meeting “an act of sabotage during wartime.”