Published on 22 June 2026
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 56072/19
Tymoteusz Jan FLEISZAR
against Ukraine
lodged on 21 October 2019
communicated on 2 June 2026
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the allegedly excessive length of the criminal proceedings against the applicant, a Polish citizen, which were instituted in Ukraine in December 2012 on suspicion of several episodes of large-scale fraud and which are apparently still ongoing at the stage of a pre-trial investigation. The applicant invokes Articles 6 § 1 and 13 of the Convention.
On 30 January 2014 the applicant was put on the wanted list in Ukraine. On 30 April 2014 he was put on the international wanted list. Starting from 8 March 2017, the Interpol excluded the applicant from its wanted list, after the Ukrainian authorities had failed to respond to its enquiries.
According to the applicant, he has never been absconding, and the Ukrainian investigating authorities were duly informed of his whereabouts in Poland. The applicant’s lawyer has kept regular contact with the investigating authorities, has been requesting various investigating measures, has consistently complained about the excessive length of the investigation and has sought, on many occasions, its discontinuation.
As known from the publicly available online State register of judicial decisions, on 9 March 2018 the investigator once again declared the applicant wanted by the police and stayed the investigation on those grounds. On 9 July 2020 the Kyiv Shevchenkivskyy District Court (“the Shevchenkivskyy Court”) allowed a complaint lodged by the applicant’s lawyer against that decision and quashed it as unfounded. It was observed that the investigating authorities had neither relied on any evidence suggesting that the applicant was absconding nor taken any measures for summoning him. While the above judicial ruling was final and not amenable to appeal, on the same date, 9 July 2020 the investigator issued another, virtually identical decision. On 5 May 2022 the Shevchenkivskyy Court also quashed it for similar reasons as before.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Was the length of the criminal proceedings in the present case in breach of the “reasonable time” requirement of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
2. Did the applicant have at his disposal an effective domestic remedy for the above complaint, as required by Article 13 of the Convention?