Thomas Sillesen, head of the Danish engineering company BIIR, knows the flaws of Ukraine’s judicial system very well: his firm was raided and the Dane spent a year demanding justice.
Sillesen won the case, but nothing could change the fact that his company’s operations in Odesa were halted for a year. To make up for this, Sillesen took aim at the two judges allegedly responsible for raiding his firm.
He sent a letter to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in November 2019, calling for the new administration to fulfill its promise to battle corruption.
But the judges haven’t been punished yet.
Zero tolerance
In his letter to the president, the Denmark-born Sillesen insists that the only way to attract foreign investment is to implement a “zero-tolerance policy towards officials who participate in attacks on foreign investors.”
Sillesen said he faced constant legal problems these past years, but he will not back down because he sees enormous potential in Ukraine.
BIIR had been operating in the country since 2013. It got its start in the eastern city of Luhansk, but had to relocate to the southern port of Odesa when Russia started the war in Donbas in 2014.
BIIR’s problems in Odesa started in March 2017, when the company bought a decayed, foreclosed building for its new office, paying around $400,000 to a local real estate firm.
Almost immediately after the purchase, the previous owners, Oleksandr Tikhomirov and Valentyn Skoblenko, influential businesspeople with political connections, challenged the building’s sale, and a local court arrested the property.
BIIR won its case only 11 months after, in February 2019, when another court canceled the local court’s decision and decided the disputed property belonged solely to the Danish businessman.
Sillesen, however, doesn’t think it’s enough.
Grudge with two judges
BIIR filed complaints to the Supreme Council of Justice of Ukraine against the two judges who allegedly unlawfully ordered the arrest of the building.
According to BIIR, the judges, Anatoliy Derus and Dmytro Osiik, had no legal grounds to order the arrest.
“They are either stupid or incompetent. But in both cases, they should be dismissed,” Sillesen told the Kyiv Post. “It is a matter of principle.”
A decision to dismiss the judges would send a strong signal to the foreigners willing to invest in Ukraine, Sillesen says.
The judges are still working and, if found guilty of wrongdoing, they could face dismissal.
The Kyiv Post couldn’t reach Derus or Osiik for comment.
In February 2018, the two were on the High Qualification Commission of Judges’ list of 1,790 judges who were to undergo job competency checks.
Sillesen sent letters to ex-President Petro Poroshenko in 2018. He received an official letter of support from Poroshenko, who said he would do all he could to encourage law enforcement to take action, but nothing happened.
The current presidential administration had a different answer: Zelensky’s office simply redirected Sillesen to the Prosecutor’s Office.
