As thousands gathered in front of a Kyiv courthouse, a judge delayed a hearing into a case against former President Petro Poroshenko until July 1 and the prosecution decided not to insist on pre-trial detention for the Ukrainian politician.
The flurry of announcements came as a dramatic crescendo to several days of speculation about whether the former president would be taken into custody in the first of 27 cases against him to reach trial.
Outside the courthouse, Poroshenko held an improvised rally, challenging the court, the prosecution and the incumbent president.
“Please, your honor, send them this garbage (case) and start following the law,” Poroshenko screamed into the microphone, provoking ecstatic cheer from his supporters.
Poroshenko, who now leads the 27-member European Solidarity faction in parliament, alleges that he is facing political prosecution by President Volodymyr Zelensky. He’s not alone in thinking that: Western politicians and diplomats have also expressed concerns about the case.
Poroshenko’s first trial
On June 18, a Kyiv district court was scheduled to hold its first hearing in a case involving Poroshenko. Eight days prior, the president had been charged with abuse of office. The court was supposed to rule on bail conditions.
According to the prosecution, Poroshenko violated the law in July 2018 by appointing a notorious official, Serhiy Semochko, to a position in the Foreign Intelligence Service that didn’t legally exist.
Investigative journalists would later discover that Semochko’s family members owned large amounts of expensive real estate, had Russian passports and had extensive ties to Russia.
Semochko was fired in April 2019. The prosecution alleges that the state budget lost a sum equivalent to Semochko’s salary for the period of his tenure.
If found guilty of abusing his office, Poroshenko faces up to 10 years in prison.
Initially, the prosecution demanded pre-trial detention for Poroshenko with bail set at Hr 10 million ($385,000). However, midway through the hearing, the prosecution changed its initial demand. It is now asking the court to allow Poroshenko to walk free if he pledges to show up for the hearings.
When news initially broke that the prosecution would demand pre-trial detention, European politicians and U.S. diplomats expressed concern.
“The European People’s Party is very concerned by political cases against former President Poroshenko,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Parliament’s largest party, wrote on Twitter on June 17.
“The charges should not resemble politically motivated persecution, nor be politically motivated against select political opponents,” he added.
On June 17, the American Embassy in Kyiv issued an official statement saying that “all citizens in a democracy deserve to be treated equally and fairly under the law,” adding that “the justice system should not be used for the purpose of settling political scores.”
The embassy didn’t officially mention Poroshenko by name, but many understood the statement as a reference to the ongoing case against the former president.
Politics involved
The Semochko case isn’t the only investigation involving Poroshenko. On June 18, the former president said he was being investigated in 27 separate cases, ranging from treason to hooliganism.
The pre-trial investigation in the cases is led by the State Investigation Bureau, formerly headed by Iryna Venediktova, who was elected to parliament with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
On March 17, the 248-member party appointed Venediktova as Ukraine’s Prosecutor General.
Her predecessor, Ruslan Riaboshapka had been fired on March 5, shortly after he publicly declined to sign charges against Poroshenko that were submitted by Venediktova’s bureau.
On June 10, Poroshenko was officially charged.
In an interview with the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet recorded on June 3, Zelensky said that Poroshenko “is an experienced manipulator.”
Prosecuting Poroshenko was also among the many slogans that Zelensky used during his campaign against the former president in the 2019 election.
Of all the cases involving Poroshenko, around 12 were submitted by Andriy Portnov, the former deputy chief of staff under Poroshenko’s predecessor, President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2014.
Portnov has openly stated he wants to see Poroshenko behind bars.
