Kyiv’s Dnipro Court on Jan. 30 held the first hearing in a criminal case against Vitaly Shabunin, head of the executive board of the nongovernmental Anti-Corruption Action Center.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center and other anti-corruption activists say the case is part of a campaign by the authorities to intimidate and weaken civil society.
The criminal case against Shabunin was sent to trial last week. Shabunin is accused of beating blogger Vsevolod Filimonenko, an aide to pro-government lawmaker Serhiy Melnychuk.
The court scheduled the next hearing for Feb. 9.
The first hearing in the case of the anti-graft activist Vitaly Shabunin ends on Jan. 30. (Kyiv Post)
A group of demonstrators outside the courthouse supported Shabunin, arguing that the case against him was political persecution by the authorities.
Meanwhile, a group of elderly ladies protested against Shabunin, accusing him of beating Filimonenko. One of them could not say why she was protesting but said that her “leader” could say so.
The anti-Shabunin protesters were accused by his supporters of having been paid – a claim that they denied.
Miroslav Oleshko, a blogger sympathetic to President Petro Poroshenko, also came to the court to support Filimonenko and criticize Shabunin.
In his video blog, called the Voice of the People, Filimonenko has supported Poroshenko and criticized his opponents. In October, he held pickets in support of the president’s Roshen confectionary when anti-government activists announced a boycott of Roshen products.
Filimonenko, known for his extravagant and provocative behavior, came to the hearing with U.S. and European Union flags, urging the West to support him in the criminal case.
During the court hearing, Shabunin said he was prepared to pay the price of the plaster used to cover the alleged injury on Filimonenko’s face.
“I acknowledge that I hit this man who had harassed my colleague (Oleksandra Ustinova) and made her cry,” Shabunin said during the hearing. “The police didn’t react to our request to investigate the harassment of our colleague.”
Shabunin argued that Filimonenko had not sustained any major injuries and falsified a medical examination, which was denied by Filimonenko. Shabunin’s lawyers argue that medics initially found no injuries to Filimonenko, and his injuries were recorded only two weeks after the June 8 incident, in what they believe to be a falsified examination.
On June 8, Filimonenko approached Shabunin when unknown people served him a summons to a military enlistment office and started asking him questions about his military service. Shabunin then hit Filimonenko in the face, saying that it was payback for Filimonenko insulting Ustinova, an expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, and making her cry.
Filimonenko then attacked Shabunin with pepper spray.
Ustinova was approached by Filimonenko and other people upon returning to Kyiv from a recent holiday to Sri Lanka in May. Ustinova said they had asked her about the money she had spent on her trip.
She said then she believed the people had been hired by the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, because the Anti-Corruption Action Center has sued the SBU for hiding its employees’ income declarations from the public and other state agencies.
Meanwhile, lawyer Roman Maselko, a member of the Public Integrity Council, argued that the High Council of Justice was trying to influence the Shabunin case by keeping Nelli Lastovka, head of the Dnipro Court, under control. The council denied the accusations.
The High Council of Justice on Jan. 30 canceled its earlier decision to fire Lastovka. The council admitted that she had violated the law but claimed that the term for firing her had expired.
Maselko dismissed the argument as absurd, saying that the term for firing judges for serious violations of the law was three years.
In March 2017 evidence was presented at a High Council of Justice meeting that Lastovka had falsified documents in a criminal case against AutoMaidan protesters who visited ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Mezhyhyrya residence in December 2013.
Lastovka and her Dnipro Court have been accused of having ties to lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, a top ally of Poroshenko, which they deny. Judges of the court have made decisions in favor of Hranovsky in his corporate dispute over the Sky Mall shopping center.
Prosecutors on Jan. 15 amended the charges against Shabunin, increasing the maximum term of punishment from three years in prison to five years. The article was changed to “assaulting a journalist,” since Filimonenko calls his Voice of the People video blog a journalist project.
The Reanimation Package of Reforms on Jan. 19 urged the authorities to stop the political persecution of Shabunin, “one of the most well-known fighters against corruption.”
The charges against Shabunin were brought in August. A Kyiv court decided not to impose travel restrictions on Shabunin and required him to inform the authorities about changes in his address or occupation.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center also said on Jan. 23 that a separate tax evasion case against the anti-graft watchdog had been transferred to the Cherkasy Oblast prosecutor’s office.
A criminal case against David Sakvarelidze, a former reformist top prosecutor and opponent of Poroshenko, was also sent to court last week. Another major opponent of Poroshenko, ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, was put under nighttime house arrest in a different criminal case on Jan. 26.
Meanwhile, in December three activists of the AutoMaidan civil-society group were charged with throwing eggs at Oleh Barna, a lawmaker from the Poroshenko Bloc, at an anti-government protest in July. They face between four and seven years in prison if convicted.
They believe the case to be a vendetta by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. The charges were brought immediately after the AutoMaidan went to Lutsenko’s house on Dec. 9 to demand the prosecutor general’s resignation.
