Published on 19 December 2022

FIFTH SECTION

Application no. 68907/14 Sergiy Petrovych KORGUN against Ukraine lodged on 17 October 2014 communicated on 2 December 2022

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns the applicant’s complaint under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that he was deprived of his pay unlawfully and that the domestic courts, in rejecting his claim for back pay, did not provide sufficient reasons for their decisions and erred in their application of domestic law.

The applicant, at the time a police officer, was arrested and eventually convicted of a corruption-related offence. Following his conviction he was dismissed from the police force. He did not receive any pay for the period from his arrest to his dismissal, from 3 February 2010 to 19 September 2011.

Before the courts the applicant argued that there had been no legal grounds for depriving him of his pay. The courts rejected his claim for the most part, allowing it only for the period when the applicant had been under an internal disciplinary investigation (February to March 2010).

Final decision: High Administrative Court, 10 July 2014.

The courts invoked, as the legal basis for withholding pay, domestic regulations providing for such withholding in the case of a police officer’s “placement at disposal” ( перебування в розпорядженні ). Under the regulations, such placement meant that an officer, due to staff movement or organisational changes, was temporarily without a specific post. Such placement was possible for up to 2 months.

The courts provided no explicit response to the applicant’s argument that those provisions did not apply to him, not least because there had never been any decision on his “placement at disposal”.

After the applicant’s dismissal, on 5 April 2012, the relevant regulations were amended and a new rule provided for cessation of salary payments for the period during which a police officer was under arrest. It appears that the domestic courts did not rely on those changes in their decisions.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Did the applicant have a fair hearing in the determination of his civil rights in accordance with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention? In particular, did the courts provide sufficient reasons for their decisions (see, for example, Bochan v. Ukraine (no. 2) [GC], no. 22251/08, § 61, ECHR 2015, and Ramos Nunes de Carvalho e Sá v. Portugal [GC], nos. 55391/13 and 2 others, § 185, 6 November 2018, with further references)?

2. Was there an interference with the applicant’s rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention? Did it comply with the requirements of that provision (see, for example, Svit Rozvag, TOV and Others v. Ukraine , nos. 13290/11 and 2 others, §§ 158-64, 27 June 2019, and Anželika Šimaitienė v. Lithuania , no. 36093/13, §§ 110-16, 21 April 2020)?