Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko on Sept. 16 lambasted a bill on the creation of independent anti-corruption courts.
Speaking at the annual Yalta European Strategy forum, Lutsenko effectively backed President Petro Poroshenko’s earlier claim that Ukraine has no time to create independent anti-corruption courts and needs to create anti-corruption chambers, or panels, at existing courts.
The bill criticized by Lutsenko was submitted to parliament in February by Yegor Sobolev, Sergii Leshchenko, Oksana Syroid and other lawmakers.
Sobolev’s bill
Lutsenko argued that it would take too long to create such an anti-corruption court, objected to the idea that this court should only handle cases of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and said that anti-corruption judges should not be appointed by politicians.
“I want an anti-corruption court to consider all corruption cases regardless of who detained them – the NABU, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Prosecutor General’s Office or the State Fiscal Service,” he said.
According to the legislation, anti-corruption judges will be appointed through an open and transparent competition with the participation of civil society and representatives of the West. The judges would have higher wages and security guards to ensure their independence and safety.
The bill envisages recruiting a special anti-corruption court for the NABU and an appeal anti-corruption panel at the Supreme Court. The Verkhovna Rada, the president and the Cabinet will each delegate three commission members to appoint anti-corruption judges.
Alexeyev’s bill
Poroshenko and Lutsenko seem to favor a competing bill submitted by Serhiy Alexeyev, a lawmaker from the Poroshenko Bloc, on the creation of anti-corruption chambers.
Alexeyev’s bill stipulates appointing anti-corruption judges at lower courts through competitions that have been criticized by non-governmental organizations as non-transparent.
Until such competitions are held, incumbent judges of Ukraine’s discredited and corrupt judiciary will choose anti-corruption judges from among themselves, which may continue for a long period of time.
At appeal courts, there will be no competitions at all, with anti-corruption judges nominated by current discredited court chairmen and chosen by incumbent judges.
Alexeyev’s bill does not stipulate paying higher wages to anti-graft judges or allocating security guards to them.
The government’s critics say that Alexeyev’s bill will entrench Ukraine’s corrupt and politicized judiciary rather than creating efficient anti-graft courts.
Yanukovych cases
Lutsenko also said that the Prosecutor General’s Office is planning to send to trial in late September the case into murders during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution against ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, ex-Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharechenko and ex-Security Service of Ukraine Chief Oleksandr Yakymenko.
However, Sergii Gorbatuk, head of the in absentia trials department at the Prosecutor General’s Office, has argued that the case cannot be sent to trial because Ukrainian authorities have so far failed to bring legislation on in absentia trials in line with international standards.
As one of his major achievements, Lutsenko listed the confiscation of money and state bonds worth $1.5 billion linked to Yanukovych associate Serhiy Kurchenko’s firms.
In March the Kramatorsk City Court concluded a plea bargain with Arkady Kashkin, the nominal owner of a firm linked to Kurchenko. The plea bargain allowed the court to confiscate the funds.
But critics have dismissed the confiscation hearings as a political show trial. Both the investigation and the trial were conducted in secret and in just two weeks.
The Prosecutor General’s Office and the Kramatorsk City Court have refused to publish the ruling, in what critics believe to be an effort to conceal violations of the law and behind-closed-door deals.
Among others things, the confiscated funds were spent on Poroshenko’s ally, the agribusiness tycoon Yuriy Kosyuk, who got 42 percent of all agricultural subsidies allocated by the government from January to June.
