Court orders the VRU Apparatus to provide Khmelnytskyi journalists with requested information

Photo by Chesno

The Khmelnytskyi District Administrative Court ruled that the refusal by the Office for Citizen Appeals of the VRU Apparatus to provide public information to the Khmelnytskyi media outlet ZHAR.INFO to be unlawful and arbitrary.

The judgement was passed on May 8, 2024, fully satisfying the lawsuit filed by journalist Alyona Bereza.

The court ordered the VRU Apparatus to provide the requested information as required by the current law. However, the ruling may be appealed within 30 days.

On March 20, 2024, Khmelnytskyi media ZHAR.INFO filed a lawsuit against the Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on behalf of their journalist Alyona Bereza for refusing to provide public data on the overseas business trips by the deputies representing the Khmelnytskyi oblast. Bereza sent several requests to the VRU Apparatus: on November 28, 2023; January 10 and February 7, 2024.

The Office for Citizen Appeals of the VRU Apparatus responded by saying that a document that would contain the requested information could not be created in the Apparatus and was not in its possession, but could only be obtained by summarizing and analytically processing data. The Office also claimed that the VRU Apparatus was not the manager of the requested information.

Disagreeing with such a reply, the editors sued.

Having heard the case, the court concluded that "the response given to the plaintiff's request should be declared unlawful" and that the journalist's claims are well-founded and should be granted.

In the judgement, the court also noted that the Office provided no evidence to prove that they were not the manager of the information or that they did not possess the information or the documents and did not in any way prove that the documents contained classified information. Moreover, the Office failed to prove that the requested information could only be obtained by summarizing and analytically processing data.