As many as 40 out of 113 candidates for the High Anti-Corruption Court have so far been either vetoed or voluntarily withdrew from the competition themselves.
The Public Council of International Experts (PCIE) and the High Qualification Commission of Judges will consider vetoing the remaining two candidates on Jan. 28.
Under the law, if a majority of he High Qualification Commission and the PCIE vote for a candidate, she or he continues their participation in the competition, given that at least three of the six PCIE members approve of the candidate. If not, the candidate is vetoed.
One of the problems is that the High Qualification Commission may now arbitrarily manipulate the ranking of the remaining candidates to promote the candidates it favors, according to Vitaly Tytych, ex-coordinator of the Public Integrity Council. The commission has already been accused of rigging the 2017 competition for the Supreme Court and manipulating the 2018 examinations for the anti-corruption court and the Supreme Court, although it denies the accusations.
Seven candidates whose integrity and professionalism were considered by the panel were not vetoed by the PCIE and were allowed to run further: Volodymyr Voronko, Serhiy Bodnar, Markiyan Halabala, Olga Salandyak, Valeria Chorna, Inna Bilous and Petro Feskov.
However, concerns about some of them remain.
Remaining controversial candidates
One of those who were not vetoed – Serhiy Bodnar, a scholar at the Chernivtsi National University – has been questioned due to his political links.
In 2012 he was the head of an election commission representing the Ukraina Vpered party of Natalia Korolevska, an ally of then president Viktor Yanukovych. In 2014 Bodnar was also the head of an election commission representing President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc. Bodnar argued that he was not biased in favor of any political groups.
In 2017 Bodnar represented the Poroshenko Bloc’s regional branch as a lawyer, while the law on the anti-corruption court bans candidates who have worked for political parties. He argued that he had represented a party branch, not a party, and that the ban does not apply to thsi type of work.
Bodnar also failed to declare that his mother worked at the police, and his brother worked at the Security Service of Ukraine. He responded that his mother’s job was not subject to being declared, and his brother’s position was secret.
Volodymyr Voronko, a judge at the Commercial Court of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, was not vetoed either.
He has upheld a Hr 11.3 million debt claim by Optimius, a firm with a negligible share capital and dubious reputation, against the customs agency, according to the PCIE. The CEO of Optimus is the founder of another firm that has been investigated in a fraud case.
Optimus has also supplied fuel to Trade Commodity, a company under investigation in a corruption case at the Defense Ministry. One of Trade Commodity’s investors is businessman Andriy Adamovsky, a former business partner of Oleksandr Hranovsky, an influential lawmaker with the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction.
Voronko argued that his ruling was lawful and did not involve any fraud.
Another candidate not vetoed by the PCIE is Valeria Chorna, a judge at the Dnipro District Administrative Court. The foreign panel and anti-corruption watchdogs wondered whether her elderly mother could afford buying an apartment with an estimated value of up to Hr 2 million ($110,000). Chorna argued that her mother could afford it, providing a document according to which the latter received $143,615 in wages in 2004 to 2014.
Inna Bilous, a judge at the Ternopil District Administrative Court, also escaped being vetoed. She banned protests from gathering near administrative buildings in Ternopil during the EuroMaidan Revolution from Dec. 10, 2013 through Jan. 7, 2014.
She argued that her ban applied only to areas adjacent to government buildings and not to other areas. Bilous also said she had aimed at preventing clashes and the blocking of government institutions.
In September 2013 she banned another peaceful protest, arguing that it blocked traffic and inconvenienced other citizens.
Roman Maselko, a lawyer for the AutoMaidan anti-corruption watchdog, and Kateryna Butko, an AutoMaidan activist, interpreted Bilous’ decision on the EuroMaidan protests as a violation of the right to peaceful assembly. Butko said the PCIE’s decision not to veto Bilous sets a dangerous precedent to allow judges involved in persecuting EuroMaidan protesters to keep their jobs.
Vitaly Tytych, ex-coordinator of the Public Integrity Council, argued that Bilous’ ban on peaceful assemblies was arbitrary and violated European standards as the ban was applied to an unlimited number of protesters and to an arbitrarily broad area. He added that the ban also violated the standards of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
According to Maselko and Tytych, during the EuroMaidan Revolution judges routinely received orders from the Presidential Administration to crack down on protesters.
Meanwhile, the foreign panel will not consider vetoing 19 out of 55 candidates named by anti-corruption watchdogs on Jan. 9 as not meeting professional ethics and integrity standards. One of the candidates who will not be vetoed by the PCIE, Kyrylo Legkykh, has a joint business with a governor, and there are major questions about the asset declarations of two others – Igor Chaikin and Olga Chaikina.
Supreme Court
The PCIE will have no veto powers over candidates currently competing for 78 extra jobs at the Supreme Court, which will be able to cancel the anti-corruption court’s rulings.
The Chesno anti-corruption watchdog has identified 91 candidates still running for the Supreme Court who do not meet professional ethics and integrity standards. The Public Integrity Council said on Jan. 23 it had so far issued negative opinions on 33 candidates for the Supreme Court and would seek to veto more candidates.
Controversial candidates for the Supreme Court include High Council of Justice members Igor Benedysyuk, Tetiana Malashenkova, Natalia Volokovytska and Mykola Husak.
They have been accused of having a conflict of interest because the High Council of Justice appoints Supreme Court judges. They have denied the accusations.
Georg Stawa, a European expert who has assessed judicial reform in Ukraine, has 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 of Ukraine was illegal if he had Russian citizenship or was not a Ukrainian citizen.
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 – 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 argued that the award was lawful.
