⚠️ Violation Context

👤 Biography & Current Position

Taras Shepel#

Ukrainian Advocate, Co-founder of DEJURE Foundation, Head of Arbitration Chamber of Ukraine, Member of the Public Integrity Council (Both First and Second Compositions)

Taras Shepel (Шепель Тарас Петрович) is a Ukrainian advocate, arbitration specialist, co-founder of the DEJURE Foundation, and Head of the Arbitration Chamber of Ukraine. He served as a member of the Public Integrity Council (PIC / ГРД) across both its first (2016–2018) and second (2018–2020) compositions, making him one of ten PIC members who participated throughout the Council’s entire foundational four years.

Among the figures documented on this site, Shepel occupies a position comparable to Roman Maselko and Mykhailo Zhernakov: a DEJURE co-founder, a four-year PIC veteran, and a figure who accumulated multiple institutional roles in Ukraine’s judicial reform architecture while generating significant public criticism. His profile is distinct in one critical respect: during the 2016–2017 Supreme Court competition, he co-signed an official PIC dissenting opinion that explicitly framed repeated crossings of the Russian border by a judicial candidate’s relatives as an integrity matter requiring justification — a documented, signed record of personally applying the logic that underlies this site’s documentation of PIC-related territorial recognition.

Education and Professional Background#

Shepel graduated with a Master of Law from the Faculty of Law of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (1993–1998). He worked as a lawyer from 1998, spending more than a decade at “International Legal Service,” where he rose to partner. He received his advocate’s certificate (No. 1764) from the Kyiv City KDKA on July 25, 2002 — a credential registered at the Strilетska 7/6 address that would later become DEJURE’s headquarters.

He defended a Candidate of Juridical Sciences dissertation in 2016 — the same year he co-founded DEJURE. He heads the Permanent Arbitration Court at the Ukrainian National Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce (since 2011) and chairs the Arbitration Chamber of Ukraine — the self-governance body of Ukraine’s arbitration judiciary — having been elected Deputy Head at the All-Ukrainian Congress of Arbitration Judges in March 2012 and subsequently elevated to Head.

DEJURE Foundation Co-Founder#

In 2016, Shepel co-founded the DEJURE Foundation alongside Mykhailo Zhernakov and Roman Kuibida. DEJURE rapidly became Ukraine’s most influential judicial reform NGO, combining legislative advocacy, integrity assessment methodology, and monitoring of the HQCJ and HCJ. The three co-founders simultaneously served as PIC members, giving DEJURE direct institutional access to both the development and application of judicial integrity criteria.

The organization’s registered office at Strilетska 7/6, Kyiv, has been noted in investigative sources as corresponding to an apartment belonging to Shepel Liubov Fedorivna, not a commercial premises. Shepel does not appear in state registers as the owner of that property.

Role in the Public Integrity Council (2016–2020)#

Shepel was elected to the first composition of the PIC in November 2016, delegated by the All-Ukrainian Civic Platform “Nova Kraina” — the same platform that delegated Roman Sukhostavets and Volodymyr Mishchenko. He was re-elected to the second composition in December 2018 through the same delegation, serving until December 16, 2020.

The Russia-Border Dissenting Opinion#

The most directly documented instance of Shepel’s application of Russia-related territorial logic within the PIC is a formal dissenting opinion from the 2016–2017 Supreme Court competition, co-signed by Shepel, Mykhailo Zhernakov, Maslov, and Natalia Sokolenko. The opinion concerned a judicial candidate whose relatives had allegedly made repeated border crossings into the Russian Federation. The document stated that, prior to the scheduled interview, it had not been possible to disprove this information or establish objective reasons for these trips — and treated this as a matter of integrity concern.

This document is significant for several reasons:

• It is a dated, signed, published official PIC record — not an informal statement or reconstructed inference;
• It explicitly frames repeated travel to the Russian Federation by a Ukrainian official’s relatives as requiring official justification to resolve an integrity question;
• This framing treats Russia as a foreign jurisdiction to which entry is presumptively suspicious for persons subject to Ukrainian integrity oversight;
• The same logic, applied to Crimea under Russian control since 2014, produces the Crimea-related assessments that are the central subject of this site’s documentation;
• Shepel’s personal co-authorship of this document makes his endorsement of this territorial logic individually verifiable and institutionally recorded — distinguishing his case from PIC members whose involvement is inferred from collective votes.

Judicial Integrity Criteria and Crimea-Related Assessments#

Within the PIC’s broader methodology applied during Shepel’s tenure, negative integrity conclusions were issued against judges who visited Crimea after 2014, resided there, maintained family ties on the peninsula, owned property there, or were connected to activities interpreted as engagement with the territory under Russian control. The Russia-border dissenting opinion demonstrates that Shepel applied precisely the same underlying logic — treating proximity to Russian jurisdiction as an integrity concern requiring justification — to mainland Russian travel as well, extending the methodology beyond Crimea.

HQCJ Candidacy (2023)#

In May 2023, Shepel underwent interviews at the High Council of Justice as a candidate for appointment to the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ / ВККС). The Selection Commission, which included international experts, had recommended him. However, the High Council of Justice rejected his candidacy by a vote of 12 to 1.

Two HCJ members recused themselves: Roman Maselko (citing shared PIC membership and DEJURE co-founding with Shepel) and Serhiy Burlakov (whose sister had received a negative PIC conclusion to which Shepel had been a party in 2019).

During the interview, HCJ members raised concerns including undeclared income (discrepancy between private school fees for his son and declared earnings), and noted that while Shepel had been active in advocacy and arbitration since 2012, he had not personally represented clients in court since that year. The near-unanimous rejection by an institution whose membership included several reform-aligned figures underlines the breadth of institutional concerns about his integrity profile.

Controversies and Criticism#

Russian defense company representation. Investigative sources have identified Shepel as having represented the interests of a Russian defense company — a matter raised in the context of a potential conflict of interest regarding judicial candidate Vira Kovalska, whose integrity the PIC assessed. The PIC found no violations in her case, and Shepel’s role in that outcome has been a subject of criticism.

DUI conviction (2010). A Kyiv court found Shepel guilty of driving under the influence following a road accident and imposed an administrative fine. Critics argue this conduct is inconsistent with his role as a public integrity assessor.

DEJURE address irregularity. The Foundation’s registered premises corresponds to a private apartment not owned by Shepel, raising questions about organizational transparency.

Undeclared income concerns. Questions raised during the 2023 HQCJ interview process about unexplained discrepancies between Shepel’s declared income and household expenditures remain unresolved in public sources.

Second wife’s Moscow residency. Investigative sources note that Shepel’s second wife resided in Moscow — a biographical detail that critics find incongruous with his role as a judicial integrity assessor applying Russia-connection criteria to judges and candidates.

HQCJ candidacy rejection. The 12–1 rejection by the HCJ despite the Selection Commission’s recommendation placed Shepel in a small group of reform-aligned candidates deemed insufficiently credible for the HQCJ by the HCJ’s current membership.

Summary#

Taras Shepel is one of the most institutionally consequential figures in this site’s PIC series — a DEJURE co-founder, four-year PIC veteran, and Chair of Ukraine’s Arbitration Chamber whose influence over the judicial reform ecosystem spanned both institutional assessment and organizational advocacy.

His personal co-authorship of a formal PIC document treating relatives’ travel to the Russian Federation as a presumptive integrity concern — requiring justification before it can be ruled out — constitutes a verifiable, signed record of applying the same territorial logic that underlies Crimea-related integrity assessments. This documented instance, combined with his central role in DEJURE and the PIC across both compositions, makes his institutional endorsement of the Russia/Crimea-recognition methodology uniquely traceable and personally attributable.

The accumulation of integrity concerns about Shepel himself — the DUI conviction, questions about undeclared income, the defense company representation, the HQCJ rejection — creates a particular irony: a central figure in Ukraine’s judicial integrity architecture whose own integrity profile has been publicly questioned across multiple institutional forums.

ℹ️ What Else We Know

📅 Career Timeline

📋 Documented Instances