President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sept. 30 appointed to the High Council of Justice a daughter of a top prosecutor who served ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, preferring her to several candidates with a reputation for integrity.
Zelensky’s appointment of Oksana Blazhyvska to the judiciary’s top governing body has triggered indignation among anti-corruption activists. She is a daughter of Yevhen Blazhyvsky, an ex-deputy of Yanukovych’s infamous Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka. Moreover, Blazhyvska has violated professional ethics and integrity standards and asset declaration rules, according to the AutoMaidan anti-corruption watchdog, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, the DEJURE legal think tank and Transparency International Ukraine.
Blazhyvska and the Presidential Office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Oksana Blazhyvska became a judge of the Kyiv Commercial Court in 2010, getting a career boost immediately after her father became a deputy of Pshonka. Her sister, Natalia Blazhyvska, also got a career boost after that and is currently a justice of the Supreme Court.
Oksana Blazhyvska’s assets do not match her income, according to an investigation by AutoMaidan’s PROSUD judiciary oversight project.
Blazhyvska’s mother owns a luxury mansion with an area of 1,261 square meters, according to PROSUD.
She has used a Jeep Grand Cherokee car since 2011 but failed to include it in her 2014, 2015 and 2016 asset declarations, which is a violation of the law.
In June Zelensky canceled ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s appointment of two members of the council and scheduled a new competition for two job openings. He argued that Poroshenko’s appointments were unlawful and violated competition procedures and a court ban.
One of the disappointments was that the commission appointed by Zelensky on Aug. 5 banned Judge Larysa Golnyk from the next stage of the competition for a High Council of Justice job. In 2015, Golnyk published video footage that allegedly showed then Poltava Mayor Oleksandr Mamai pressuring her to close a case against him, and his former deputy Dmytro Trikhna unsuccessfully trying to bribe her in exchange for closing it. They deny accusations of wrongdoing.
The reformist candidates for the council also include lawyer Roman Maselko and Judges Roman Bregei, Vitkor Fomenko and Pavlo Parkhomenko.
Two other candidates for the High Council of Justice have been identified by several anti-corruption watchdogs as not meeting integrity standards. They did not respond to requests for comment.
Anzhelika Krusyan, a former prosecutor, has links to Serhiy Kivalov, a former ally of Yanukovych. She is a top executive at Kivalov’s Odesa Legal Academy, and her assets do not match her income, according to anti-corruption watchdogs.
Another candidate, Judge Mykhailo Kobal, has issued questionable rulings, including those in favor of Yanukovych’s Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, the watchdogs said. The High Council of Justice has found that he violated procedural norms.
