A slew of legal decisions has laid bare the widespread corruption in Ukraine’s courts and emphasized the shallowness of the country’s efforts to make its judicial system trustworthy.
On Aug. 28, the Constitutional Court ruled that the appointment of Artem Sytnyk in 2015 as head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine was unconstitutional.
On Sept. 1, the High Council of Justice refused to suspend several top judges implicated in corruption, including the notorious Pavlo Vovk.
Finally, on Sept. 2, the Perchersk Court in Kyiv ruled that state-owned PrivatBank must pay $350 million to offshore companies belonging to brothers Ihor and Hryhoriy Surkis, business partner’s of the bank’s former owner, oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
The three rulings have sparked outrage among reformers, political experts and the business community, who say they demonstrate that court reform has failed, endanger Ukraine’s cooperation with its international partners and will potentially undermine economic development.
Andy Hunder
President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine
“The court system is absolutely rotten to the bone. And it’s the reason why investors have shied away. When Secretary (of State Mike) Pompeo was in Kyiv in January, he asked me what are the reasons why investors aren’t coming to Ukraine, and I said one of them is rule of law. We need someone to take responsibility. No one else…at the moment can do that unless it’s the president himself.
Mykhailo Zhernakov
Chairman of the board at the DEJURE Foundation
“This all paints the same picture, where (billionaire Ihor) Kolomoisky and other oligarchs — and Russia actually, and their agents here — want to dismantle what has been done well after the Revolution of Dignity, reforms of the institutions. The others want to maintain the status quo, which was, and in many ways still is, the oligarchy in Ukraine. All three things are part of the same picture, where oligarchs are proxies in politics and use the courts and the other law enforcement agencies to secure their interests. Here we see the president and his political power tend to maintain the status quo and, let’s say, make life easier for the oligarchs. It looks like they are trying to kind of trick the International Monetary Fund and all the rest, pretending to do one thing and doing the other thing instead, but this never works. If the judicial reform doesn’t happen, I really doubt that any other serious international aid (will come), and I’m talking about from the Western countries, of course.”
Melinda Haring
Deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center
“Yet another obvious sign that Ukraine is going in the wrong direction. The need for judicial reform could not be more apparent. The High Council of Justice must be rebooted as soon as possible, and if Zelensky is serious about attracting foreign direct investment, he must overhaul Ukraine’s court system for real this time. The tragic part is that we know how to do this — there are endless books and studies and experts who detail how to fix dodgy court systems — but no one does it. Ukraine repeats this cycle endlessly, and ordinary people and the overall image of Ukraine suffers as a result.”
Volodymyr Fesenko
Political strategist
“The thing that connects these two decisions is that Ukraine never conducted a true court reform. That which was done under (ex-President Petro) Poroshenko was largely an imitation of reform. Poroshenko didn’t want to truly conduct not just a reform, but a cleaning of the court system. The problem in Ukraine is not that we have bad institutions. (In the West), they think that we need to conduct some institutional changes… and they say don’t touch independent courts. And that’s the biggest mistake, because in our courts there is a system of corrupt judges covering each other’s backs… In order to break this system, you don’t need to simply change the courts. You need to carry out a total cleaning, a total change of people working in the courts. Without this, the situation will not change.
“The scariest and most dangerous decision is not of the Constitutional Court. It’s the story of the Kyiv District Administrative Court and the High Council of Justice. Because Poroshenko could have changed the High Council of Justice, but he just changed its roster. He put his own people there. And in the end, there were people connected with one another there. The High Council of Justice is controlled by members of the judge mafia. And for that reason, they don’t touch Judge Vovk and those judges who stand accused of corruption, of putting pressure on the courts from the Kyiv District Administrative Court.
“Why did the Constitutional Court decide to support a doubtful understanding of NABU? Because they’re corrupt and they are afraid of anti-corruption institutions. For this reason, these problems will continue and Ukraine needs a real court reform. And not just a changing of functions or specific court institutions, but a core change of the people in them in all higher court instances.”
Pavlo Kukhta
Economist, former acting minister of economic development, trade and agriculture
“The judicial system is obviously not capable of purging this egregious behavior immediately from the top.
“I can attest from my experience in the government that the High Council of Justice has a very, very big influence. To tolerate this kind of behavior is clear evidence that the judicial system is not functioning and it needs immediate drastic reform. As long as this is not fixed, including the personalities at the top of the court, no reform will come in any meaningful way in the country and since investment is the key to economic growth, the economy, the army will continue to degrade, this clearly signals to anyone that property rights are not respected in the country, which means investment will not come… investors will be scared away which means there will be no economic growth.”
Serhiy Fursa
Dragon Capital financial analyst
“The Pechersky court decided that state-owned PrivatBank should pay the Surkis brothers Hr 10 billion. In other words, instead of sending those Hr 10 billion into the state budget as profit, the bank should send them into the offshores of the Surkis brothers… And what about the president? It seems he’s silent. Busy. In the morning, he has to carry out 100 and one great deeds, disperse the fog, sneak into a messenger chat for truck drivers, cut the ribbon at a kindergarten and look how a road is being constructed from on board a helicopter. After all, he already dispersed the fog and the visibility is great. The president is busy. And it’s not the president’s job to defend taxpayers from oligarchs. Or to reform the court system. The president happily redistributes taxpayers’ money, especially money which hasn’t been made yet, money which (Ukraine) borrows (from the International Monetary Fund). After all, that’s a pleasant activity. But battling the Surkises and the Ukrainian court mafia — that doesn’t bring him any joy.”
