Outspoken investigator Sergii Gorbatuk said the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office is blocking criminal investigations of judges accused of issuing unlawful rulings against EuroMaidan protesters.
Some of these judges sit on the controversial Kyiv Administrative District Court.
Gorbatuk, head of the in absentia investigations unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office, made the statement in a July 28 interview with Deutsche Welle. The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
More than 10 notices of suspicion, or criminal charges, are pending against judges who issued allegedly unlawful rulings against demonstrators during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution. Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko’s deputies Anzhela Stryzhevska and Yuriy Stolyarchuk have refused to authorize any of them, according to Gorbatuk.
The EuroMaidan Revolution ousted then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia.
Gorbatuk also said that Lutsenko refused to authorize some of the searches he requested, including searches at the personal offices of the Kyiv Administrative District Court judges. As a result, most of the valuable evidence he hoped to find could have been destroyed, he added.
“They just didn’t want these judges to be searched,” the investigator said. “And there were no lawful reasons to reject such searches. As far as I understand, the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office did not want to quarrel with the judges.”
He said that the Kyiv Administrative District Court judges’ “feeling of total impunity” can be explained by “their links to absolutely all top state and law enforcement officials.”
Gorbatuk said on July 26 that his unit and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) had drafted charges for several of the Kyiv Administrative District Court’s judges in a separate case, unrelated to the EuroMaidan Revolution.
The judges are accused of unlawfully interfering in the work of the top judicial body, the High Qualification Commission of Judges. The judges are also accused of issuing unlawful rulings and illegally interfering in the work of other courts.
Gorbatuk and NABU sent the new charges for approval to Deputy Prosecutor General Serhiy Kiz, who is currently the acting prosecutor general while Lutsenko is on vacation. Kiz has not yet approved the charges.
The Kyiv Administrative District Court denied the allegations, stating that the “unlawful actions of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the NABU are evidence of attempts to pressure the judges and discredit them.”
The court’s chairman, Pavlo Vovk, and judges Yevhen Ablov and Igor Pogribinchenko will face the charges, a source in the Prosecutor General’s Office told the Kyiv Post.
Audio Recordings
The NABU and the Prosecutor General’s Office on July 26 released audio recordings that purport to implicate top judges of the court in unlawful activities.
In the recordings, voices alleged to belong to Vovk and other judges appear to be putting together lawsuits to suspend the authority of High Qualification Commission members Serhiy Kozyakov, Stanyslav Shchotka and Tetiana Veselska and appoint other members instead.
The Prosecutor General’s Office and NABU also said that Vovk and other judges of his court had illegally interfered in the State Investigation Bureau’s work.
In the alleged recording, Vovk appeared to unlawfully arrange a ruling by Odesa’s Suvorovsky District Court to ban the qualification assessment of judges by the High Qualification Commission.
The recorded voices also discussed taking bribes for court rulings and the acquisition of expensive jewelry and old coins.
Finally, the recordings provide alleged evidence of Vovk’s links to ex-President Petro Poroshenko, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and former lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, as well as former High Council of Justice Head and current Supreme Court judge Igor Benedysyuk and ex-lawmaker and former Yanukovych ally Serhiy Kivalov.
All had previously denied influencing law enforcement.
