Young journalists-turned-politicians lost a court case on Sep. 30 as they sought to challenge an official registration for an oligarch to run in the Oct. 26 parliamentary election.
The oligarch in question, former deputy
Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, has lived in Monaco in the past
few years. Under Ukraine’s law, only Ukrainians who have lived
in the country permanently for the past five years are allowed to run
for parliament.
“It is clear the rule of law isn’t
working in Ukraine,” said prominent journalist Serhiy Leshchenko,
who is running in parliamentary election for the first time. “I am
afraid some high ranking Ukrainian officials ordered to
register Khoroshkovsky as part of an unofficial agreement with former
regionals (Party of Regions members).”
Khoroshkovsky is one of Ukraine’s
richest men. He recently returned home to run in the Oct. 26
parliamentary election on the party list for Sylna Ukraina headed by
another mogu, ex-Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko.
Khoroshkovsky made his fortune in the
metallurgy and media sectors, among others. He served as deputy prime
minister between February 2012 and December 2012 under now ousted
President Viktor Yanukovych.
Former journalists running on the party
list of Ukrainian President Petro Proshenko, Leshchenko and Mustafa
Nayyem, filed a complaint to the Kyiv Appelate Administrative Court
stating that Khoroshkovsky’s registration was in violations of the
Ukrainian law.
Records from the Ukrainian border
service provided by the plaintiffs showed that Khoroshkovsky left
Ukraine in December 2012 after leaving office and did not return
until September 2014.
However, journalist lost the case as
the oligarch was allowed by court to run for parliament.
Khoroshkovsky did not attend the
proceedings, but sent lawyers from the Kyiv Legal Company he owns to
represent them. The registration documents presented to the
Central Election Committee by Khoroshkovsky first stated he was
unemployed before later stating he was employed by the Kyiv Legal
Company and had been on a business trip abroad for the time in
question.
Yaroslav Porokhnyak, one of the men
representing Khoroshkovsky, said he had not seen the contradictory
documents before that day.
Svetlana Chernyuk from the Central
Election Committee’s legal department defended the Committee’s
decision to approve Khoroshkovsky’s candidacy stating that his
documents were in order.
After a long recess the three judges in
the case ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to show that
Khoroshkovsky’s election registration documents were not in order.
Leshchenko and Nayyem vowed to appeal the decision.
“The decision shows you that to the
state and (presidential) administration an oligarch matters more than
journalists,” said their lawyer Tatyana Kozachenko.
