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Reformer of the week – Halya Coynash
Halya Coynash, a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, said in a March 2 op-ed that all judges who persecuted EuroMaidan protesters were likely to be reinstated.
The Supreme Court on Feb. 19 reinstated Viktor Stepanenko, a judge fired by parliament in 2016 for unlawfully trying EuroMaidan protesters, citing alleged procedural violations. This opens the way for the reinstatement of the rest of the 19 judges fired by parliament for persecuting EuroMaidan demonstrators, she said.
Out of the 351 judges accused of unlawfully trying EuroMaidan activists, only 14 percent have been fired, and almost all the deadlines for firing them have expired.
Most of those fired have been preliminarily reinstated by the High Administrative Court, and their cases are pending at the Supreme Court. The High Council of Justice also recently canceled its decisions to fire 10 judges implicated in cases against EuroMaidan activists.
Last year President Petro Poroshenko appointed to ordinary courts for life three judges accused of persecuting EuroMaidan activists, and appointed five judges implicated in EuroMaidan cases to the Supreme Court.
Cases against only 16 judges charged with unlawfully trying EuroMaidan demonstrators have been sent to court, and two of them have already been acquitted.
In February Poroshenko appointed Serhiy Holovaty, a former lawmaker from ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions party, to the Constitutional Court.
In May the High Administrative Court reinstated Oleksandr Paseniyuk, a Constitutional Court judge who had been fired by the Verkhovna Rada for helping Yanukovych usurp power. Oleksandr Paseniuk is the uncle of Makar Paseniuk, Poroshenko’s investment banker.
Paseniuk headed the High Administrative Court in 2004 to 2011. According to the alleged black ledger of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions partially published in 2016, the party gave bribes worth $15 million to judges of the High Administrative Court. One of the entries says “Paseniuk, security” — $55,000.”
Meanwhile, in December, the Constitutional Court abolished a legal clause that banned lawmakers who voted for the “dictatorial laws” of Jan. 16, 2014 to become university rectors. The dictatorial laws, which were passed during the EuroMaidan Revolution, greatly cracked down on civil liberties and triggered riots.
Anti-reformer of the week – Yuriy Zozulia
Yuriy Zozulia, head of Kyiv’s patrol police, has gone from being an icon for Ukraine’s police reform, to the face of its sabotage.
The patrol police was set up in 2015 to replace the notoriously corrupt Soviet-style traffic police.
Zozulia took part in the demolition of a protest tent camp in front of the Verkhovna Rada by the police on March 3, even though there was no court warrant banning the protest, during which police officers arrested 112 protesters. Under Ukrainian law, breaking up such a protest is unlawful without a court warrant.
The protesters had been demanding President Petro Poroshenko’s resignation, the creation of an anti-corruption court, stripping lawmakers of immunity and a fairer and corruption-free election law.
At least 19 protesters received serious head injuries, and some were forced to kneel.
The police said it had been investigating the protesters in two criminal cases, providing it as a justification for the camp’s demolition. The demonstrators dismiss this explanation as absurd, given that only one of them has been officially charged.
Pavlo Bogomazov, a lawyer for the detained activists, told the Kyiv Post the police also violated the law by using excessive force and detaining protesters without filing detention reports. The activists also accused the police of stealing their property by demolishing their tents and destroying their contents.
Zozulia also took part in the detention of ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili without a court warrant in a criminal case on Dec. 5. The Pechersk Court ruled on Dec. 11 that the detention had been unlawful.
Kyiv Police Chief Andriy Kryshchenko also took part in the March 3 crackdown on the tent camp. The operation was spearheaded by National Police Chief Serhiy Knyazev and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Avakov’s own son has been officially charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine in a Hr 14 million corruption scheme and arrested – before being released without bail.
In a video recorded by the Security Service of Ukraine and recognized by courts as genuine, Avakov’s ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar, the Interior Ministry’s State Secretary Oleksiy Takhtai and state firm Spetsvervis CEO Vasyl Petrivsky, an ex-aide to Avakov, negotiate a corrupt deal to sell sand at a rigged auction in Chebotar’s office. In the video, Chebotar says that Avakov is also aware of the deal and is worried that the sand has not been sold yet. Petrivsky has pled guilty and has been convicted in a theft case for selling the sand.
Avakov denies the corruption accusations.
