The Supreme Court overturned the High Anti-Corruption Court's decision to seize the land on which the Stolichny Market is located
On October 15, the Supreme Court overturned a ruling by the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court, which for several years had prevented the tenant of the “Stolychny” market from challenging the seizure of property ordered in 2021. The case was remanded for reconsideration.
Now, the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court must reassess whether there are grounds for seizing the entire 139-hectare market area. As noted in the article, the actions of the investigation may indicate that Rostislav Batig, a prosecutor with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, has long sought to avoid addressing the merits of this case.
18 hectares in the case — and 139 under seizure
The criminal proceedings are investigating events surrounding 18 hectares of state-owned land which, according to law enforcement officials, were illegally removed from state ownership in 2021. However, in September of that same year, the High Anti-Corruption Court seized not only the disputed 18 hectares but also four additional land plots with a total area of 139.4239 hectares. Virtually the entire area where the “Stolichny” market operates has been placed under procedural seizure.
At the same time, the aforementioned 139.4 hectares were never actually removed from state ownership. The state remains the owner of the land, and the market is the lessee. Moreover, Prosecutor Batig personally confirmed in writing to the Supreme Court that none of these four plots are related to the criminal proceedings.
The cost of such “security” turned out to be quite substantial. According to the defense, in April 2026, the bank denied Rynok a loan of 110,000,000 hryvnias for the construction of new retail pavilions—precisely because of the existing seizure order. Bank officials explicitly stated that they would resume negotiations only after the restrictions were lifted. Prosecutor Batig, meanwhile, argues in his documents that the ruling “does not restrict any lease agreements or powers.”
Procedural Pitfalls and Collateral as a Means of Discipline
To prevent the seizure from being reviewed in court, the prosecutor employed a specific procedural tactic. At the 2021 hearing, where the fate of the property was decided, the tenant was simply not summoned, and a copy of the ruling was not sent to him. Batig later acknowledged this in writing: “That is precisely why the decision to seize the property was not sent to the party.”
According to Part 3 of Article 395 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, for a person who was not present at the hearing, the appeal period is strictly calculated from the date of receipt of a copy of the decision. The prosecutor cites this provision in his documents but immediately asserts that the deadline for Rynok “expired on September 20, 2021”—that is, one week after the hearing, of which the company was not even aware.
When Rynok did file an appeal, the prosecutor convinced the judges that the company “was aware” of the decision from other sources and, therefore, had missed the deadline. The Appeals Chamber dismissed the appeal without ever proceeding to consider the merits of the case.
At the same time, in May, the case took a turn toward direct pressure. On May 14, Rynok’s director’s defense team sent the prosecutor a motion to reduce the bail. That same day, the director was summoned to receive a counter-motion from Batog—to increase the bail from 5,000,000 UAH to 19,997,952 UAH (nearly four times as much). The prosecutor cited Rynok’s filing of an appeal as the basis for this move, characterizing it as “a realization of the risk of committing another criminal offense.” The court rejected the prosecutor’s request.
In June, during hearings in the Supreme Court, Batig publicly called the tenant’s arguments “false” and the cassation appeal “formal manipulations,” and Rynok himself—a party that has no right whatsoever to challenge the seizure.
The Supreme Court’s Position
The Supreme Court panel rejected the prosecution’s procedural arguments.
The court explained in detail: the procedural deadline for filing an appeal is calculated exclusively from the date of receipt of a copy of the ruling, “regardless of the existence of other sources of information about the decision.”
The Supreme Court did not take into account the prosecutor’s assertion regarding the company’s “awareness,” noting that the case file contained no evidence that a copy of the ruling had been served on Rynok. In addition, the Supreme Court recalled the binding opinion of the Joint Chamber of the Supreme Court, which has been in effect since 2019 (Part 5 of Article 13 of the Law “On the Judicial System and the Status of Judges”). Incidentally, Judge A. S. Nikiforov of the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court had already pointed out the disregard for this practice back in March in his separate opinion.
Pressure Instead of Adversarial Proceedings
The Supreme Court did not overturn the seizure on its own but remanded the case to the appellate court for reconsideration. However, the chronology of events reveals a systemic bias in the procedural officer’s conduct.
The proceedings concern 18 hectares, but the entire market has been blocked. Every time the business attempted to prove its case in court, the prosecutor responded by denying the right to defense, making accusations of “manipulation,” and demanding that the bail for the business owner be raised to nearly 20 million hryvnias.
Article 9 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine requires the prosecutor to impartially investigate both the circumstances that incriminate and those that exonerate the individual. When the prosecution manipulates deadlines, disregards binding rulings of the Supreme Court, and labels the very act of filing a lawsuit as evidence of a crime, this is no longer about ensuring the investigation but about deliberate pressure on the business and an attempt to block a substantive review of the arrest.
This is stated in a ruling by the State Register.
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