See related stories here, here and here.
A Poltava court on Aug. 10 closed a kidnapping case against Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes. The court said that none of the 19 prosecutors in the case had attended the seven latest hearings.
Lawyers describe this as “unprecedented legal nonsense” by the judge, and outrageous behavior by the prosecutors.
The collapse of the Kernes case follows the closure of the embezzlement case against Interior Minister Arsen Avakov’s son Oleksandr Avakov and the minister’s ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar on July 12 by Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky’s office. The case was closed despite their being a mass of damning evidence against them, including video footage of them discussing a corrupt deal.
A prosecutorial commission on July 26 refused to fire Kholodnytsky — despite the existence of tapes that revealed him obstructing corruption cases. Now Kholodnytsky is blocking all cases of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, including those against Central Election Commission Chief Mykhailo Okhendovsky and Natalia Korchak, ex-head and current top official of the National Agency for Preventing Corruption.
This indicates that the authorities don’t care even about the façade of anti-corruption reforms anymore, and are blatantly entrenching their kleptocracy ahead of the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections.
President Petro Poroshenko needs the mayors of major cities, including Kernes, to influence election results. The authorities also need Okhendovsky, who unlawfully remains in his job despite the expiry of his authority in 2014. He’ll count the votes the way they want.
Meanwhile, Kholodnytsky and Korchak, who have done their best to obstruct anti-graft efforts, will make sure that corruption cases go nowhere during and after the dangerous election season.
In this situation, the yet-to-be-created anti-corruption court will be a fig leaf, even in the unlikely scenario of it being independent, because no graft cases will be sent to it. The corrupt counter-revolution is now complete. The elections will show if Ukrainians are willing to accept this.
