After two years of litigation, Slidstvo.Info won the lawsuit against Serhiy Semeniuk, partner of a Russian businessman, the media outlet reported in an Instagram post.
Slidstvo.Info says that Semeniuk sued the media outlet and their journalist Yanina Korniyenko follwing the release of Korniyenko’s investigation that featured him as a subject.
“It should be noted that this lawsuit matched the SLAPP criteria (strategic lawsuits against public participation); moreover, the plaintiff tried to manipulate the automated judge roster by filing the same lawsuit multiple times,” comments Slidstvo.Info’s lawyer Oksana Maksymeniuk.
According to her, since the case was tried in the simplified procedure, filing a cassation appeal is only possible in exceptional cases.
“There are no grounds for this as of now, in my opinion. Moreover, the court ruling has entered into force,” the lawyer said.
Shortly after Serhiy Semeniuk sued the journalists, Slidstvo.Info learned that his lawyers had tried to hijack the digital judge roster so that the case would be tried in court by a “convenient” judge. They had attempted to manipulate the automatic case allocation system, which randomly determines who will try the case. For this purpose, Semeniuk’s attorney filed and withdrew the lawsuit several times until the choice landed on the judge they needed.
Slidstvo.Info adds that another, previously unknown person named Vladyslav Hrindak, with a residence permit in the same district of Dnipro city as the Zhovtnevyi District Court, was included in the case as a defendant. Semeniuk’s lawyers sued the man for sharing the Slidstva.Info investigation on Instagram, where Hrindak only has 30 followers and a total of two posts.
“It is telling that Semeniuk’s lawyers copied his post with the investigation 17 seconds after it was published. Back then, the first instance court sided with Semenyuk in part, but they lost decisively on appeal. The procedure does not allow further cassation, since the trial was carried out as simplified proceedings,” added Slidstvo.Info.
In October 2023, Serhiy Semeniuk, business partner and friend of a Russian businessman, sued the journalists for a joint Slidstvo.Info/OCCRP investigation into the cleaning companies affiliated with the Russian businessman, which had been providing cleaning services to Ukrainian strategic objects for years
Serhiy Semeniuk filed a defamation lawsuit against Slidstvo.Info and the author of the investigation, Yanina Korniyenko. His attorneys attempted to manuipulate the digital judge roster which randomly determines who will try the case. For this purpose, the attorney filed and withdrew the lawsuit several times until the system picked the judge they wanted, and added another defendant besides Slidstvo.Info — Vladyslav Hrindak.