Reformer of the week – Zurab Alasania
The supervisory board of Ukraine’s Suspilne Telebachennya (Public Television) on Jan. 31 fired Zurab Alasania as the CEO of the channel. The decision arrived exactly two months before the presidential election in March, evoking fears of censorship at the state-funded station.
Suspilne Telebachennya’s (Public Television) board said in the initial draft decision on Alasania’s firing that the channel failed to extensively cover events featuring President Petro Poroshenko. But the board removed this from the final draft of the decision, according to the minutes of the Jan. 31 meeting released on Feb. 6.
The board denied accusations of censorship and gave the official justification for the firing as financial mismanagement, allegations that Alasania denied.
Meanwhile, dozens of independent journalists signed a joint statement on Feb. 1 against Alasania’s dismissal, saying that this “direct manifestation of censorship and a very dangerous precedent for the country.”
Suspilne has been an irksome channel for the authorities due to major investigative shows exposing top officials’ corruption – Schemes, Nashi Hroshi and Slidtsvo.info.
In December, Natalie Sedletska, the chief editor of Schemes, an investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said that her sources warned her that Suspilne’s supervisory board was about to consider stopping the broadcasting of Schemes and Nashi Hroshi.
Suspilne’s board chairwoman Tetiana Lebedeva argued that the board had neither the power nor intention to remove the investigative shows it buys from other firms. She said, however, that the board was considering a move to produce its own shows instead of buying external ones such as Schemes.
Anti-reformer of the week – Igor Benedysyuk
The High Qualification Commission of Judges on Feb. 4 refused to consider the Public Integrity Council’s veto on High Council of Justice Chairman Igor Benedysyuk as a candidate for a job on the Supreme Court. The commission has also refused to consider seven other vetoes on Supreme Court candidates by the Public Integrity Council.
The Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog, is vetoing candidates whom it deems to be non-compliant with integrity and ethics standards.
The commission said it would not consider the veto on Benedysyuk because it had been submitted to the commission 4 minutes later than the deadline it set for the Public Integrity Council. The deadline is part of the commission’s new regulations blocking the council’s work that the civic watchdog considers unlawful. In September, the Supreme Court canceled part of the regulations as unlawful, although the deadline remained.
Benedysyuk and three other High Council of Justice members who are running for the Supreme Court are accused of having a conflict of interest because the High Council of Justice appoints Supreme Court judges. They have denied the accusations.
Georg Stawa, ex-president of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice, told the Kyiv Post they must step down from the council as soon as possible due to the conflict 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 in Ukraine was illegal if he had Russian citizenship or was not a Ukrainian citizen.
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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 –, when he got his Ukrainian citizenship and how he was able to work at courts in Russia and Ukraine simultaneously.
Benedysyuk has been investigated as part of a case into illegal interference into the distribution of cases at the High Commercial Court, although he has not been officially charged and denies the accusations.
Benedesyuk, who still remains a judge, was also awarded a weapon by President Petro Poroshenko in 2015 but the law bans such awards for judges, according to ex-Public Integrity Council member Roman Kuybida. Benedysyuk, who was appointed to the High Council of Justice by Poroshenko, argued that the award was lawful.
He has also covered up for tainted judges as chairman of the High Council of Justice, according to the Public Integrity Council. Benedysyuk denies the accusations.
