Former Constitutional Court head Tupytskyi still in Austria despite being on international wanted list
Footage from Aug. 13 also shows Tupytskyi walking in the Austrian capital city of Vienna.
According to journalists from Ukrainian television’s Skhemy investigative program, Tupytskyi’s wife Olha and their two children left Ukraine in a BMW car on March 17. Tupytskyi himself illegally left Ukraine on the same day through the Kosyno border crossing point in Zakarpattia Oblast.
The latest data on his border crossing is an arrival from Turkey on Feb. 22. However, according to the Skhemy journalists, the photos taken on March 24 showed Tupytskyi near the Stefanie Hotel in Vienna.
Tupytskyi is 59 years old, i.e. he is of draft age and is not currently allowed to travel abroad.
He was put on international wanted list in late May. In July, Kyiv’s Podilskyi District Court chose a pretrial restriction of detention for him. This will allow prosecutors to request his extradition from Austria.
Tupytskyi is accused of knowingly giving false testimony, combined with falsifying defense evidence (Part 2 of Article 384 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and bribing a witness (Article 386 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
If found guilty, he faces up to five years in prison.
The Tupytskyi case
Incumbent President Volodymyr Zelenskyy canceled former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s 2013 decrees appointing Oleksandr Tupytskyi and Oleksandr Kasminin as judges of the Constitutional Court on March 27, 2021. He said he had done so because they posed a threat to the independence and national security of Ukraine.
Tupytskyi and Kasminin challenged Zelenskyy’s decree in the Administrative Cassation Court under the Supreme Court, which declared it “illegal and contrary to the law.”
Starting from December 2020, Tupytskyi was twice suspended from his duties as a judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine due to criminal proceedings being launched against him.
Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
