Editor’s Note: Every week Kyiv Post journalist Oleg Sukhov picks a winner and loser in Ukraine’s drive to transform itself into a rule-of-law, European-style democracy.
Reformer of the week – Markiyan Halabala
Lawyer Markiyan Halabala on Nov. 12 successfully passed legal knowledge tests for the High Anti-Corruption Court.
In 2014 to 2016, Halabala was a member of a commission for the lustration of judges accused of unlawfully persecuting EuroMaidan protesters.
Halabala, who is also a lawyer for the families of slain EuroMaidan protesters, was a legal expert at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2009 to 2010.
See related stories here, here and here.
Other candidates with a reputation for independence and without a corrupt background also got through to the next stage of the competition for places on the anti-corruption court. According to Iryna Shyba, a legal expert at the DEJURE foundation, these include judges Roman Bregei, Andriy Maleyev, Natalia Akhtyrska and Viktor Fomin.
However, whistleblower judge Larysa Golnyk has been banned from taking part in the competition for the anti-corruption court in what she sees as revenge for her whistleblowing activities.
There are accusations that legal knowledge tests, which were taken by candidates for the court on Nov. 12, could have been manipulated in favor of government-friendly candidates.
Many of the test questions had more than one correct answer, Vitaly Tytych, coordinator of the Public Integrity Council, Judge Mykhailo Slobodin and High Qualification Commission member Andriy Kozlov said. Thus the commission had an opportunity to promote some candidates by telling them which answers it deems right, according to Tytych, who was a candidate for the Supreme Court but did not pass to the next stage. He said that he had requested his test results from the High Qualification Commission, and – if the commission refuses to submit them – it would be the ultimate proof of manipulations.
Anti-reformer of the week – Ihor Benedysyuk
Ihor Benedysyuk, the chairman of the High Council of Justice, on Nov. 12 successfully passed legal knowledge tests for a place on the Supreme Court.
High Council of Justice members Tetiana Malashenkova, Natalia Volokovytska and Mykola Husak also passed the tests and got into the next stage.
They have all been accused of having a conflict of interest, because the High Council of Justice appoints Supreme Court judges.
The High Council of Justice responded that it’s up to the National Agency for Preventing Corruption to decide on conflicts of interest.
According to his official biography, in 1994 Benedysyuk was simultaneously a judge of a Russian court martial and a Ukrainian one. Public Integrity Council members say that Russian citizenship was a necessary precondition of being a Russian judge, and that his appointment as a judge of Ukraine was illegal if he had Russian citizenship or was not a Ukrainian citizen.
He has said that he got his Ukrainian passport in 1996 and did not have a Russian or Ukrainian passport before that. However, lawyers say that before the issuing of passports residents of Russia and Ukraine got Russian and Ukrainian citizenship stamps in their Soviet passports and were considered citizens of their respective countries.
The High Council of Justice said in a response to the Kyiv Post that Benedysyuk had not applied for Russian citizenship. The council also said that the Verkhovna Rada checked whether Benedysyuk had complied with Ukrainian citizenship requirements when he became a Ukrainian judge in 1994.
Benedysyuk has failed to clarify whether he has had Russian citizenship, when and whether he terminated it – if he did – and how he was able to work at courts in Russia and Ukraine simultaneously.
Benedysyuk and his fellow High Council of Justice members have also been lambasted for appointing 30 Supreme Court judges who were vetoed by the Public Integrity Council over violations of professional ethics and integrity standards. The council said it had grounds to believe that the Supreme Court competition had been rigged in favor of government loyalists.
The judicial authorities denied the accusations.
Meanwhile, Valentyna Simonenko, who was appointed by Benedysyuk and his colleagues as a Supreme Court judge last year, registered as a Russian taxpayer in Russian-annexed Crimea in 2015, according to the official register of Russia’s Federal Tax Service checked by the Kyiv Post.
