Olena Tanasevych, head of the newly-established High Anti-Corruption Court, faces a Herculean task: to deliver tangible results in corruption cases for the first time since Ukraine became independent in 1991.
Another challenge is to avoid political influence on her court in a judiciary system that has been extremely politicized for decades.
Tanasevych has a clean reputation: She has not been implicated in corruption or ties to any politicians.
But some have questioned her ability to head the anti-corruption court. She is a judge from a small town in eastern Ukraine without experience in corruption cases.
The law on the anti-corruption court stipulates explicitly that a judge of the court must have this kind of experience.
The anti-corruption court was set up as a separate entity from the standard court system. Its judges were appointed with the participation of foreign experts. Ukrainian civil society and Western experts view the country’s standard courts as notoriously corrupt and incapable of delivering justice in corruption investigations.
In an interview with the Kyiv Post, Tanasevych was reluctant to explain how exactly the anti-corruption court would be different from regular courts. She also said she saw no problems with the old judiciary.
“Our goal is simple: to deliver effective justice in corruption cases in full accordance with the law, despite the fact that a certain part of society treats either criticism or support of the anti-corruption court as their public relations stunts,” Tanasevych said.
Background
In April, Ukraine appointed the judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court, and Tanasevych was elected as its chairwoman in May. The court began its work on Sept. 5.
Tanasevych worked as a lawyer from 2002 to 2010 and as an assistant to a judge starting in 2010. In 2012, she became a judge of the district court in Pechenigy, a town in Kharkiv Oblast with a population of 5,264 people, and then a deputy chairwoman of the court.
Her five-year term as a judge of the court expired in 2017.
Tanasevych said she presided over land dispute, theft, robbery, battery and murder cases in Pechenigy — but not any corruption cases.
She has also not been entirely free from controversy. In her official asset declarations, Tanasevych and her husband listed 24 land plots in Kharkiv and Zaporizhia oblasts with a total area of 562,000 square meters, triggering questions about the origin of these assets.
Tanasevych said that her husband had purchased some of the land plots to plant an orchard and was planning to start “agricultural business activities there.”
However, she declined to comment on the source of the funds used to acquire the land plots and on her husband’s business.
Selection process
During the selection process for the anti-corruption court in 2018 to 2019, Tanasevych got 82.5 points on theoretical knowledge tests, ranking 13th, and 59.5 points on practical tests, ranking 63th. Despite this relatively low score for practical tests and a lack of experience in corruption cases, she received 792 points for professional skills, professional ethics and integrity in the final ranking, earning her first place.
Asked why exactly she received such a high final score, she said the question should be addressed to the High Qualification Commission of Judges. The commission declined to comment.
The commission has not yet explained the reasons behind any of its nominations for the anti-corruption court, and civic activists and legal experts have accused it of using an arbitrary assessment methodology for candidates. The commission denied the accusations.
The High Qualification Commission has been accused of manipulating the tests for the High Anti-Corruption Court and the Supreme Court. The commission also denied this.
But civil society activists raise serious concerns about the exams. Some of the test questions had more than one correct answer, according to former Public Integrity Council member Vitaly Tytych, former High Qualification Commission member Andriy Kozlov and Judge Mykhailo Slobodin.
The commission also had the opportunity to promote some candidates by telling them which answers were correct, according to Tytych, who participated in the competition for the Supreme Court but did not pass the tests. The commission then refused to give him his test results, which he says proves they were falsified.
Tanasevych dismissed those accusations, saying she “didn’t see any sabotage in the tests.”
Controversial judges
Tanasevych also denied accusations that the selection process for the anti-corruption court was not entirely transparent.
“If the decisions (on the appointment of anti-corruption judges) are valid and have not been canceled, we must accept and respect these decisions,” Tanasevych said. “The judges about whom there were questions managed to make it through the Public Council of International Experts. This means the complaints against them were unfounded.”
The Public Council of International Experts, a foreign advisory panel, banned 42 out of 113 candidates for the court from the competition due to doubts about their integrity and professional ethics.
However, seven of the 38 judges appointed to the court by ex-President Petro Poroshenko in April had been identified by anti-corruption watchdogs as not meeting integrity and professional ethical standards.
Another judge of the court, Serhiy Bodnar, has been accused of having no legal right to hold his position because he had an agreement to represent the interests of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc political party in court in 2017. The law disqualifies candidates with such roles. Bodnar denied the accusation.
Different from others?
Tanasevych did not say exactly how the High Anti-Corruption Court would differ from the old discredited judiciary. She claims that the conventional judicial system is not as bad as the media and civic activists make it look.
“The judiciary did work,” she said. “Among judges, there are those who are highly professional and qualified and devoted to their work.”
Tanasevych and her court face the challenge of delivering verdicts in corruption cases against top officials.
Since 1991, very few high-ranking officials have been jailed in Ukraine for corruption, and even those few cases were tainted with evidence of political motivation.
The highest-ranking figure, former Interior Minister and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, was imprisoned under former President Viktor Yanukovych in a case widely seen as politically motivated.
Lutsenko was arrested in 2010, sentenced to four years in prison in a $125,000 embezzlement case in 2012 and then released after receiving a pardon in 2013.
Tanasevych said she could not say why so few top officials had been imprisoned for corruption because she had not researched the issue professionally.
Commenting on politically motivated cases such as the Lutsenko case, she said “there must be no suspicious circumstances during criminal investigations” and “criminal investigations must be in full accordance with criminal law.”
“Work with society’s expectations is the most difficult thing,” Tanasevych said. “These expectations are not uniform — they are diverse. Those accused of corruption expect more humane measures. But there is another part of society that wants the opposite — more severe penalties.”
Tanasevych argued that the anti-corruption court “must find a balance between the public interest in criminal investigations and the private interests of the accused and suspects, which is to minimize violations or restrictions on their interests and liberties.”
She also declined to comment on her attitude toward the judicial reform carried out under Poroshenko, including the creation of a new Supreme Court. The reform was hailed by Poroshenko as a major achievement but criticized by anti-corruption watchdogs and civil society because it led to the appointment of numerous tainted judges.
“This is more of a political question, and I’d like to abstain from such comments,” Tanasevych said.
Political influence?
Tanasevych rejected claims there was political interference in the work of the High Anti-Corruption Court under Poroshenko and incumbent President Volodymyr Zelensky, including in the selection process for the court’s chief.
She said she had “had no behind-the-scenes contacts” with Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan.
“I’m sure that no calls were made to any of the judges (during the selection process for the chief),” Tanasevych said. “There have been no attempts at political influence so far… Since 2012, not a single state official has requested anything from me.”
