The Monaco Court of Appeal has ordered the annulment of all the criminal proceedings initiated in September 2017 against Dmitriy RYBOLOVLEV and his lawyer, Tetiana BERSHEDA, following the unlawful use of her phone.
At the request of the investigating judges, with the agreement of the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Court of Appeal has followed the findings of the judgement against Monaco by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of June 6, 2024. In its unanimous ruling, the Court found that the extraction and use of Me BERSHEDA’s phone were in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to private life.
The proceedings in Monaco, however, were initiated solely on the basis of messages illegally extracted from this phone.
The only conceivable decision was to annul all of these irreparably flawed proceedings, in which Dmitriy RYBOLOVLEV and his lawyer were unjustly indicted in 2018.
A few months ago, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland took note of the ECHR ruling and dismissed the criminal proceedings that were based on the unlawful use of Me BERSHEDA’s phone.
“We are pleased that today the Monegasque justice system has done the same.
As we have stated consistently over these seven years of judicial inquiry, Dmitriy RYBOLOVLEV and Tetiana BERSHEDA maintained their innocence and awaited the end of this case with confidence”, said attorneys for Dmitriy RYBOLOVLEV and Tetiana BERSHEDA in their joint statement.
This criminal proceeding was the last one pending against Dmitriy RYBOLOVLEV and Tetiana BERSHEDA in Monaco where he was cleared of charges in November 2023 and she was acquitted in March 2024 in relation to an alleged violation of a third party’s privacy.
Therefore, there are no longer any open criminal proceedings against Dmitriy RYBOLOVLEV and Tetiana BERSHEDA. They are totally and definitively cleared.
