Kyiv's Pechersky District Court has selected a measure of restraint for former President of Ukraine (2010-2014) Viktor Yanukovych in the form of detention in absentia under the case on making amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine with the aim of seizing power in the country.

A source from the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) told Interfax-Ukraine that such a measure of restraint was selected for Yanukovych upon a petition of the PGO within the proceedings on the criminal case in which the ex-president is suspected of having committed a crime under Part 2 of Article 27 and Part 1 of Article 109 (actions aimed at forceful change or overthrow of the constitutional order or take-over of power) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The Aver Lex bar association has also confirmed this information to the agency.

According to the press service of Aver Lex, Yanukovych's defense lawyer Vitaliy Serdiuk said that the court's ruling was illegal and based on the case files fabricated by the PGO.

"The amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine were made by the Constitutional Court in 2010 in line with the legal procedure, and Viktor Yanukovych did not intrude in the process. The employees of the PGO, Andriy Neskorodiany and Oleksandr Suprun, have entered into a collusion on criminal case No. 42017000000003538 dated November 7, 2017. They are using forged materials as evidence and are trying to legalize them in court under control of the incumbent government," the lawyer said.

He also said that in 2010 the persons, who later became representatives of the oppositional forces during the events on Maidan, actively supported the cancellation of the amendments made to the Constitution in 2004, which were approved by the Constitutional Court.

"The PGO has no claims against the judges of the Constitutional Court who approved the decision in 2010. The prosecutors' long-lasting hard work in search for proofs of a non-existent guilt of Viktor Yanukovych has ended up with an attempt to legalize the so-called "shadow accounting book" using which he allegedly influenced the judges… It is known that the information about the existence of this "book" was inspired by Ukrainian law enforcers and their western curators with the aim of intruding into the U.S. presidential election in 2016. This information has been confirmed by NABU [National Anti-Corruption Bureau] Director Artem Sytnyk… And the investigation materials about the so-called shadow accounting were used exactly for this purpose. Just as well as the closure of cases against other defendants in the so-called shadow accounting case due to alleged absence of the event of a crime," the lawyer said.

Serdiuk mentioned as an example a case against former Head of the Central Election Commission Mykhailo Okhendovsky, which was opened in December 2016 on suspicion of taking a UAH 1.2 million bribe, which was allegedly registered in the "shadow accounting book" of the Party of Regions. The case was closed in January 2020 under Article 284 (absence of occurrence or elements of criminal offence) of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine.

As it is known, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine returned the country to the presidential-parliamentary form of government, returning part of the lost powers to the president. The decision of the Constitutional Court, essentially, put into effect the 1996 Constitution.

On October 1, 2010, the text of the "new Constitution" was published in the special issue of the bulletin "Official Bulletin of Ukraine."