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Ukraine’s judiciary is an upside-down world.
The whistleblowers who expose corruption in the court system are punished and pressured, while those charged with high-profile crimes are getting away with them, or are even promoted.
This practice discredits Ukraine’s judiciary and makes the prospects of judicial reform even more dubious, lawyers and activists argue.
Whistleblowers
In 2015 Larysa Golnik, a judge of Poltava’s Oktiabrsky Court, published a video featuring Poltava Mayor Oleksandr Mamai and his former deputy Dmytro Trikhna unsuccessfully trying to bribe her.
Golnik was then suspended and claimed that Oleksandr Strukov, the chairman of the Oktiabrsky Court, was pressuring her and even assaulted her, which Strukov denies.
The Council of Judges, the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission have so far failed to punish or fire Strukov. The Council of Judges said that it had started looking into Golnik’s case in February, while the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission declined to comment.
A Poltava court is considering a case against Trikhna, but Mamai is merely a witness in the case, and there is no case against Strukov. The trial has seen no progress whatsoever since 2015 – allegedly because of Mamai’s political influence.
In 2015 another whistleblower, Judge Serhiy Bondarenko of Cherkasy Oblast’s Court of Appeal, released a recording of the court’s chairman, Volodymyr Babenko, pressuring him to make an unlawful decision in 2013.
The Council of Judges started investigating the case in 2015, but the High Qualification Commission and the High Council of Justice have failed to take a decision on punishing or firing Babenko for over two years. Neither is Babenko being criminally prosecuted.
“Nothing has changed,” Bondarenko told the Kyiv Post. “Judges are still not protected from external influence and pressure, because there’s no one to appeal to. The result is zero – and they’re also trying to make me responsible.”
Other judges, including Iryna Makarenko at Kyiv’s Shevchenko Court and Lyudmila Synetska at Cherkassy Oblast’s Chernobayevsky Court, have complained about illegal pressure being put on them by the authorities during the prosecution of EuroMaidan protesters in 2013 to 2014.
Makarenko told the Kyiv Post that her former court chairwoman, Olena Meleshchak, had also pressured her when she had upheld a libel case in 2012. Meleshchak could not be reached for comment.
“She told me ‘why the f*** didn’t you consult me?’” Makarenko said. “She also told me I was unpredictable.”
Makarenko added that she had been reprimanded by Meleshchak and could have been criminally prosecuted if Meleshchak had remained the court’s chairwoman.
However, the High Council of Justice has refused to punish court chairs and officials of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration who lobbied unlawful rulings during the revolution, Roman Maselko, a lawyer for the AutoMaidan civic activist group, told the Kyiv Post. Iryna Mamontova, a former judge and member of the High Council of Justice, has exposed a system of unlawful orders given by the Presidential Administration through court chairs during the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Maidan judges
Out of the about 300 judges allegedly involved in the persecution of EuroMaidan protesters, only 33 have been fired so far under the lustration law. Most of the 33 judges have appealed their dismissal, and in March the High Administrative Court reinstated one of those fired, Judge Alla Chalaya from Kyiv’s Svyatoshynsky Court.
Since September, the disciplinary section of the High Council of Justice has recommended for dismissal just five more judges who issued rulings against protesters, though no final decision on their dismissal has been made.
The High Council of Justice argues that it had no legal framework to fire the rest of the 300 judges until early January, but Maselko says the council has been dragging its feet and blocking the dismissals. Many deadlines have expired, and the final deadline for the last firings is in May.
The council has also refused to fire some controversial judges who cracked down on EuroMaidan activists, including Bogdan Sanin of the Kyiv Administrative District Court and Mykola Chaus of Kyiv’s Dnipro Court, who fled last year after being caught with a bribe.
Criminal cases
Only 11 out of the approximately 300 judges who illegally prosecuted EuroMaidan protesters are currently on trial, and one of them has already been acquitted.
Viktor Kytsyuk, a judge of Kyiv’s Pechersk Court, was charged in 2015 with unlawfully trying EuroMaidan protesters. He was suspended and released without bail but has not been convicted yet. In March the High Council of Justice refused to fire him.
Kytsyuk was also involved in the political show trial of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko under Yanukovych.
Serhiy Vovk, another judge of the Pechersk Court, was charged in 2015 with issuing an unlawful court ruling. He was suspended and released without bail but has not been fired or convicted.
Vovk is infamous for presiding over a political show trial of Yury Lutsenko, who is now prosecutor general and was an opposition politician under Yanukovych.
Another controversial judge is Artur Yemelyanov at the High Commercial Court. In October he was charged with illegally interfering in the distribution of court cases and organizing unlawful rulings. He was released on bail and suspended, but has not been fired or convicted yet.
Yemelyanov’s wife has 13 million Swiss francs on accounts in Liechtenstein, which were frozen in a money laundering case in 2015 and unfrozen due to Ukrainian authorities’ inaction in 2016.
Yemelyanov, who was a deputy head of the High Commercial Court under Yanukovych, and Viktor Tatkov, who was its head, have been accused of spearheading a large-scale corruption and corporate raiding system, which they deny.
Bribing big
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court itself has been thoroughly discredited.
Yury Baulin, chairman of the Constitutional Court, and five other judges of the court are being investigated by the Prosecutor General’s Office on suspicion of helping Yanukovych usurp power.
However, the Prosecutor General’s Office has so far refused to issue formal notices of suspicion for them.
Judges of the Constitutional Court received a $6 million bribe from the Party of Regions, according to the party’s alleged accounting ledger published last year.
However, President Petro Poroshenko and the Verkhovna Rada have so far refused to replace Baulin and other Constitutional Court judges.
Baulin has denied the accusations.
