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President Petro Poroshenko and his ally Ruslan Knyazevych have been blocking the second reading of a bill on the anti-corruption court since its adoption at first reading on March 1, Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Center’s executive board, claimed in a blog post on May 10.
The Presidential Administration and Knyazevych did not respond to requests for comment.
About 2,000 amendments to the bill had been submitted by March 15, he said.
Parliament’s legal policy and justice committee, headed by Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Knyazevych, has held five meetings since March 15 but failed to even begin considering the amendments, Shabunin added.
The committee is dominated by pro-government lawmakers, including Poroshenko’s top ally Oleksandr Hranovsky, widely believed to be the gray cardinal behind the law enforcement system.
“(Knyazevych) is not in a hurry,” Shabunin said. “Either he hasn’t been informed about the president’s promises to have the law passed quickly or, which is more likely, he realizes quite well that these promises are insincere… Of course, the president may think he’s very clever and blame the Verkhovna Rada, but we should recall how quickly lawmakers have passed other laws that were desirable for Poroshenko.”
Poroshenko and his allies have constantly moved the deadline for passing the anti-corruption court bill into law, from December 2017 to April, to May, and now to June.
“The president promises new dates for the adoption of the anti-corruption court law all the time and then passes the buck to lawmakers,” Shabunin said.
The Verkhovna Rada passed a law on judicial reform in June 2016, stipulating the creation of an anti-corruption court in the future.
Since October, thousands of protesters have regularly demanded the creation of an anti-corruption court, and Western partners have also called for it.
Poroshenko and his allies resisted the idea from 2016 until late December, when he submitted the legislation to parliament.
In December and January, Ukrainian anti-corruption groups, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Union and the European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission, criticized Poroshenko’s bill and urged him to amend it.
They said that Poroshenko’s legislation does not guarantee the selection of independent anti-corruption judges. However, Poroshenko refused to amend the bill ahead of its first reading.
In a March 6 interview with the Financial Times, Poroshenko again refused to guarantee the court’s independence. He said that he would resist Western donors’ demands that they have a crucial role in the court’s creation, claiming that this violates Ukraine’s Constitution and sovereignty.
However, Vitaly Tytych, a member of the Public Integrity Council, and other lawyers argued that a crucial role for foreign donors does not contradict Ukraine’s Constitution and sovereignty. They see it as a ploy by Poroshenko to ensure that he controls the anti-corruption court.
Another problem is the assessment procedure for anti-graft judges.
During the Supreme Court competition, 90 points were assigned for anonymous legal knowledge tests and 120 points for anonymous practical tests, and the High Qualification Commission could arbitrarily assign 790 points without giving any explicit reasons, Tytych argued.
In order to make the assessment objective, 750 out of 1,000 points should be assigned for anonymous legal knowledge tests and practical tests in competitions for both the anti-corruption court and other courts, Tytych said.
