Supreme Council Rejects Bill Regarding Secret of Confession

The bill on making alterations to the Criminal Code of Ukraine regarding the secret of confession was initiated by a deputy, Volodymyr Marushchenko.

According to the accompanying explanatory note, the bill is aimed to ensure the right to the secret of confession and prevention of abuses in the questions of disclosing of the professional secret by lawyers, notaries, doctors, psychologists and elimination of defects in the area of legal regulation of rights of the participants of the criminal process. The bill proposed to made alterations to Paragraph 1 of Part 1 of Article 69 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, namely to make obligatory the written form of the permission of persons revealing information to lawyers or other law specialists entitled to provide legal assistance personally or by a power of attorney issued by a legal person, notaries, doctors, psychologists in the process of their professional activity to disclose that information during interrogations and to exclude priests from the list of persons mentioned in that paragraph.

It was also proposed to add to Part 1 of Article 69 of the mentioned Code a new Paragraph 6 stipulating that ministers cannot be interrogated as witnesses regarding the information received by them during confessions.

According to the results of voting, The Supreme Council rejected the bill.