Three judges of the Kyiv District Administrative Court have accused President Petro Poroshenko of illegally interfering in their work and urged law enforcement agencies to investigate.
The Presidential Administration did not respond to a request for comment.
On April 18, these judges ruled that the nationalization of PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest financial institution, was illegal. The bank was previously owned by billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky before the nationalization.
The Ukrainian government nationalized PrivatBank after it was found to have an over $5.5 billion hole in its ledger. That money was allegedly extracted by Kolomoisky and his business partner Gennadiy Bogolyubov using fraudulent schemes. Kolomoisky denies the accusations of wrongdoing, and several parallel legal cases over the bank are currently ongoing in Ukrainian and London courts.
Kolomoisky has been suspected of secretly backing comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was elected president of Ukraine on April 21. Zelenskiy’s television shows air on the oligarch’s 1+1 television channel. Both the president-elect and Kolomoisky deny being political allies.
On April 23, the administrative court’s press office stated that Judges Igor Kachur, Volodymyr Keleberda and Vitaly Amelyokhin had filed a complaint about the alleged interference by Poroshenko, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko and Yakiv Smoliy, head of the National Bank of Ukraine, with the High Council of Justice. The Justice Ministry and the National Bank did not respond to requests for comment.
The judges also asked the Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Investigation Bureau to investigate the matter. Additionally, they urged the Verkhovna Rada to initiate Poroshenko’s impeachment in connection with the alleged interference.
Because Poroshenko is president, he cannot be charged with a crime, only impeached. After impeachment, he could theoretically be charged.
However, impeachment remains a grey area in the Ukrainian context and there are doubts that it is possible under current legislation. Furthermore, as an outgoing president, Poroshenko will leave office before he could theoretically be impeached.
Judicial ties
On April 18, Poroshenko asked the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine to consider investigating the judges who canceled PrivatBank’s nationalization as a possibly unlawful ruling.
Poroshenko also proposed speeding up the qualification assessment of judges at the Kyiv District Administrative Court in an effort to cleanse it. However, the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog, believes that the qualification assessment of judges has failed on Poroshenko’s watch.
The Kyiv District Administrative Court is headed by Pavlo Vovk, a man accused of having ties to Oleksandr Hranovsky, a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc party who — his critics allege — exerts an undue influence on Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies and courts. Hranovsky denies influencing the judiciary.
In 2016, Radio Liberty filmed Hranovsky meeting with Vovk. The judge said they had discussed a bill on the appointment of judges, and Hranovsky also said the discussion dealt with legislative issues.
According to the Chesno civic watchdog, Judges Kachur, Keleberda and Amelyokhin do not meet integrity and professional ethics standards. They have denied accusations of wrongdoing.
