Reformer of the week: Vitaly Tytych
The High Council of Justice on Sept. 20 refused to give the floor to Vitaly Tytych, a member of the Public Integrity Council, a civil-society watchdog that oversees judicial reform.
Tytych wanted to give the council a Justice Ministry statement that Bohdan Lvov, head of the High Commercial Court and a candidate for the new Supreme Court, had falsified the conclusion that ex-High Commercial Court Chief Viktor Tatkov is not subject to lustration under the law on the dismissal of top officials who served ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Tatkov was fired under the lustration law in 2016.
The High Council of Justice on Sept. 29 appointed Lvov as a judge of the new Supreme Court.
Tytych also said that Lvov, who Tytych says was a Tatkov protege, is being investigated for embezzlement during a construction project.
Lvov, whose income does not match his spending, also said he had brought two watches worth between $40,000 and $100,000 from abroad, but could not explain when he did this or prove that he paid import taxes on them, which could mean that he smuggled them and evaded taxes, Tytych said.
Lvov is also being investigated for the interference in the automatic distribution of cases by Tatkov and his former deputy Artur Yemelyanov, who have been officially charged in a criminal case.
Tatkov, who has fled Ukraine, and Yemelyanov have been accused of spearheading a large-scale corruption and corporate raiding system under Yanukovych. Yemelyanov’s wife has 13 million Swiss francs on accounts in Liechtenstein.
High Council of Justice member Pavlo Grechkivsky used to co-own 7.5 hectares of land with Yemelyanov and was suspected by prosecutors of illegally privatizing it, according to a Radio Liberty investigation.
Lvov, who was negatively assessed by the Public Integrity Council, is also under investigation in a criminal case against Grechkivsky, who has been charged with fraud but voted for Supreme Court candidates nonetheless, according to the Slidstvo.info investigative television program. According to the investigators, Grechkivsky has promised to help in a legal dispute with Lvov’s assistance for $500,000.
Lvov, who denies accusations of wrongdoing, has also been investigated for making an unlawful ruling, and the Supreme Court has ruled that one of Lvov’s rulings violated human rights and involved interference in the automatic distribution of court cases.
He is accused of being close to the political leadership. He has been awarded a gun by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, which was seen as a political favor.
In August he was filmed by Radio Liberty at a birthday party of Valery Heletei, who heads the presidential security guard detachment. Lvov used to work with High Council of Justice Chairman Ihor Benedysyuk, a presidential ally, at the High Commercial Court and at court martials. Benedesyuk has requested to be exempted from voting for Lvov due to a conflict of interest.
During interviews at the High Council of Justice and the High Council of Justice, Lvov behaved as if the issue of his appointment as head of the new Supreme Court had already been decided beforehand behind closed doors, Tytych said. The two judicial bodies showed their bias by asking him positive questions and blocking negative information, he added. They denied the accusations.
Anti-reformer of the week: Valery Heletei
Employees of the State Security Department, headed by Valery Heletei, assaulted journalists of the Schemes investigative project, according to video footage in Radio Liberty’s Schemes television program aired on Sept. 21.
Heletei and his subordinates denied there had been an assault, but their claim is contradicted by the video footage. The assault resulted in a cameraman suffering from concussion and other injuries.
State Security Department employees repeatedly tried to prevent the journalists from filming state officials, despite the journalists being in a public area. The attack took place during the wedding of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko’s son in the wealthy Koncha Zaspa district south of Kyiv.
President Petro Poroshenko and many other top officials attended the wedding. Schemes journalists argued that the use of the State Security Department for officials’ private purposes was an abuse of power.
Heletei, who was defense minister in 2014, has also faced accusations of negligence that resulted in the killing of hundreds of Ukrainian troops by the Russian army during the battle of Ilovaisk in August 2014. No top Ukrainian officials have faced charges as a result of the disastrous defeat at Ilovaisk.
