The High Qualification Commission, a governing body of the judiciary, has ignored 56 percent of the Public Integrity Council’s vetoes on 133 candidates for Supreme Court jobs who are deemed to be corrupt and dishonest, members of the council said at a news briefing on July 18.
The Public Integrity Council is a civil society body that oversees ongoing judicial reform in Ukraine, including the Supreme Court competition.
“Most of the vetoes have been overridden, and there is a real possibility that candidates with established facts of dishonest actions – not assumptions but facts – will get into the Supreme Court,” Mykhailo Zhernakov, a member of the Public Integrity Council and an expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms non-governmental organization, said at the briefing.
The High Qualification Commission has denied accusations of helping corrupt and pro-government judges, portraying the competition as the most transparent and honest one in Ukraine’s history.
During interviews with candidates in April to May, the commission supported 25 of the Public Integrity Council’s vetoes and ignored 108 of them.
During the next stage of the competition in June to July, the commission supported 26 of the vetoes and overrode 76 vetoes with two thirds of its votes. The consideration of the vetoes was completed on July 17.
Eight candidates opted out of the competition on their own accord in an effort to avoid responsibility for failing to meet ethical standards, the Public Integrity Council said.
The most prominent of the opt-outs is Pavlo Vovk, an ex-aide to Serhiy Kivalov, who was an ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. In May 2016 Vovk was also filmed meeting with lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, one of the most influential members of President Petro Poroshenko’s party. Hranovsky said that he and Vovk had been discussing legislative issues.
Vovk’s income doesn’t justify the expensive property that he owns, the Public Integrity Council believes. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau is investigating Vovk over alleged unlawful enrichment.
The Public Integrity Council also submitted negative information on about 100 other candidates without formally vetoing them.
The High Qualification Commission will now compile a rating of the candidates based on their scores, interviews and compromising information.
Subsequently the High Council of Justice will make a final decision on who will be appointed as judges of the Supreme Court, and Poroshenko will make the formal appointments.
The Public Integrity Council urged the High Council of Justice to support its vetoes on candidates deemed to be dishonest.
The court must comprise 120 judges and the minimum number necessary for its functioning is 65.
The High Qualification Commission has initially said that it did not have to choose all of the 120 judges if there are not enough worthy candidates but then changed its mind and promised to nominate all of them.
One of the controversial candidates backed by the High Qualification Commission is High Commercial Court Judge Tetiana Kozar, whose aunt has acquired two apartments in Kyiv despite having no income that would explain the purchase, said Yevheniia Motorevska, a member of the Public Integrity Council.
The commission also overrode vetoes on Serhiy Slynko and Vyacheslav Nastavny – judges of the High Specialized Court for Civil and Criminal Cases. Under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, they participated in a political trial of Yuriy Lutsenko, who was then an opposition politician and is now prosecutor general.
The Public Integrity Council’s veto on Valentyna Symonenko, head of the Council of Judges, was also overridden. The ex-husband of Symonenko has a business in Crimea, while her sister is an official who works for the Russian occupation government on the annexed peninsula, Motorevska said.
Another candidate supported by the High Qualification Commission is incumbent Supreme Court Chairman Yaroslav Romanyuk, who backed ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s “dictatorial laws” of January 16, 2014, which cracked down on civil liberties.
In 2008 Romanyuk took part in the Bochan vs Ukraine case, which has been recognized by the European Court of Human Rights as lawless and “a denial of justice.”
The commission also ignored the Public Integrity Council’s veto on Deputy Prosecutor General Angela Stryzhevska in what critics saw as an effort to promote a loyalist of the authorities.
Stryzhevska has a conflict of interest because of her prosecutorial duties and has committed procedural violations as a judge before, the watchdog said. Stryzhevska denies accusations of wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities have so far refused to create independent anti-corruption courts.
The European Union had previously insisted on their creation but European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on July 13 that Poroshenko had persuaded him that Ukraine should create an anti-corruption panel within the existing Supreme Court instead of establishing independent anti-corruption courts.
But Hugues Mingarelli, the EU’s ambassador to Ukraine, said on July 17 that the EU’s position on anti-corruption courts had not changed and called for “the establishment of an independent, efficient judicial body with the necessary authority and resources to fight corruption.”
Another blow to judicial reform was the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada on July 13 of a bill that stipulates the appointment of Constitutional Court judges without an open and transparent competition. Roman Kuybida, an expert at the Reanimation Package of Reform, said that the bill would allow the president, parliament and the Congress of Judges to appoint their loyalists in an arbitrary way.
