In an Aug. 6 op-ed in the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya newspaper, he wrote that the new Supreme Court expected to be formed under the recent judicial reform laws could be completely dominated by President Petro Poroshenko.
“I’d like to understand at last: Are we creating a new Supreme Court of Ukraine or – again – the Supreme Court of the president of Ukraine?” he wrote.
He warned that the judicial reform laws did not specify any concrete competitive procedures for selecting new judges of the Supreme Court.
The High Qualification Commission, which will be responsible for the competition, has not shown a desire to clean up the judiciary and is subject to presidential influence, Zhernakov said.
Moreover, court chairmen appointed by ex-President Viktor Yanukovych are expected to hold sway over the judiciary for years to come because “it’s easier for the president to find a common language with the previous regime’s judges” than with new, honest ones, he argued.
Anti-reformer of the week: Mykola Chaus
Mykola Chaus, a judge of Kyiv’s Dnipro district court, was caught by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau with a $150,000 bribe on Aug. 9.
However, Chaus cannot be arrested until parliament strips him of his immunity from prosecution.
Chaus has been repeatedly accused of having ties to lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, one of President Petro Poroshenko’s grey cardinals. Meanwhile, Dmytro Sus, a prosecutor reportedly linked to Hranovsky and Poroshenko’s key ally Ihor Kononenko, raided the bureau last week, accusing it of illegal wiretapping.
A commission for firing judges has concluded that Chaus issued unlawful rulings against EuroMaidan protesters, but the High Council of Justice has refused to fire him, which critics see as a payback for his political loyalty.
Last December Chaus issued an arrest warrant for Gennady Korban, a political opponent of Poroshenko, in a kidnapping and embezzlement case. Lawyers say there were numerous procedural violations in Korban’s arrest.
In April Chaus removed from the wanted list Yury Ivanyushchenko, an ally of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych charged with embezzlement, prompting accusations of corruption.
