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Reformer of the week – Roman Maselko
Roman Maselko, a member of the Public Integrity Council, on May 3 accused the High Qualification Commission, a governing body of the judiciary, of violating the law on electronic asset declarations. The commission denies the accusations of wrongdoing.
Commission members Andriy Vasylenko, Pavlo Lutsyuk, Volodymyr Butenko, Tetiana Shylova and Serhiy Prylypko have failed to undergo special declaration checks by the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, Maselko said.
Meanwhile, the High Qualification Commission has so far failed to check the asset declaration of another commission member, Tetiana Veselska, he added.
Veselska is under investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine over alleged unlawful enrichment. According to the NABU, cash worth Hr 777,689 and real estate worth Hr 1.781 million in her asset declaration cannot be explained based on her income. She denies the accusations.
Meanwhile, the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog, suspended its work in March because it said the High Qualification Commission had blocked its operations. The Public Integrity Council said it would not participate in what it believes to be the fake vetting of judges that is being carried out by the High Qualification Commission.
During the first stage of the ongoing vetting of all judges (testing), which started in November, only about 0.2 percent of 990 judges failed to pass vetting, compared to 40 percent of judges who failed to pass tests during the Supreme Court competition.
During the second stage (interviews), only 3 percent out of 578 judges had been recommended for dismissal by April 23. More than 70 of these judges who underwent vetting do not meet integrity standards, according to the Chesno civic watchdog.
During the first day of the interviews on March 23, the High Qualification Commission interviewed nine judges in just one-and-a-half hours. Interviews with some of the judges lasted only six minutes.
The High Qualification Commission plans to vet 5,000 judges by the end of this year, which the Public Integrity Council believes turns the whole process into a meaningless rubber-stamping procedure that will keep the corrupt judiciary intact.
Anti-reformer of the week – Yuriy Titov
Yuriy Titov, a member of the High Qualification Commission, committed an administrative offense in 2017 by failing to declare a change in his assets on time, according to the National Police.
Titov denied accusations of violating the law, citing a court ruling according to which he did not have to file the declaration. However, the Prosud judicial watchdog believes the ruling to have been unlawful.
Titov is reportedly an associate of Serhiy Kivalov, a controversial ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, and a member of the supervisory board of Kivalov’s Odesa Judicial Academy.
During last year’s competition for the Supreme Court, the practical test of People’s Front lawmaker Leonid Yemets, who did not pass the tests, was assessed by Titov.
“It turns out that an ally of Kivalov is in charge of assessment in a competition in which a (former) aide to Kivalov wins, while Kivalov’s opponents lose,” Public Integrity Council member Mykhailo Zhernakov said then.
Meanwhile, the Kyiv District Administrative Court is considering a case on the alleged falsification of documents submitted by Taras Lukash, another member of the High Qualification Commission, for his appointment.
Yet another High Qualification Commission member, Tetiana Shylova, has violated judicial ethics by acquiring a government apartment free of charge despite having enough money to buy an apartment, the Public Integrity Council said. Shylova denies the accusations of wrongdoing.
The High Qualification Commission and the High Council of Justice cannot be trusted to conduct an objective and fair competitions for the anti-corruption court and other courts without severe foreign and civil society oversight and without a drastic change in the competition’s methodology, according to the Public Integrity Council. They cannot be trusted because they violated the law and demonstrated their political bias by rigging the competition for the Supreme Court, said Vitaly Tytych, a Public Integrity Council member.
The state bodies deny the accusations.
