{"id":566,"date":"2020-12-01T09:02:02","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T09:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=129861"},"modified":"2020-12-01T09:02:02","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T09:02:02","slug":"the-court-that-rules-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/01\/the-court-that-rules-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"The court that rules Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

In summer 2019, NABU detectives and officials from the General Prosecutor\u2019s Office searched the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court. While the search was under way, NABU director Artem Sytnik and Serhiy Horbatyuk \u2013 then head of special investigations at the General Prosecutor\u2019s Office \u2013 released covert audio recordings<\/a> of conversations between court officials, at a joint press conference.<\/p>\n

The tapes allegedly show judges at the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court discussing plans to issue unjust court decisions and interfere with the work of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, which monitors the country\u2019s judges. The recordings also contain references to Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine\u2019s parliamentary commissioner on human rights. According to investigators, Denisova helped Vovk place a judge on the qualification commission. Denisova has not commented on these allegations.<\/p>\n

In response, the prosecutor\u2019s office charged three judges in the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court \u2013 Vovk, Yevhen Ablov and Ihor Pohribnychenko \u2013 as well as Ivan Shepitko, a district judge in Odessa, with interfering in the work of state bodies. Speaking at the time, Vovk called<\/a> the recordings \u201ca lie from beginning to end\u201d. He said the voices on the tapes were similar to those of judges in the administrative court, but that the conversations had been edited out of context.<\/p>\n

A month after the revelations in 2019, Vovk, some ten years in the post, resigned<\/a>, only to take up his position once again this year.<\/p>\n

Volodymyr Zelenskyi at press conference, October 2019 | Source: Office of the President of Ukraine<\/div>\n

At Zelenskyi\u2019s first major press conference in 2019, journalists asked the new president when he would sign a decree to abolish the court \u2013 or whether, like his predecessor Poroshenko, Zelenskyi also needed a \u201cconvenient\u201d court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need anybody to be \u2018convenient\u2019,\u201d Zelenskyi said at the time. \u201cI\u2019m ready to look into this issue, ready to sign a decree that will help justice, and there\u2019s no question over the Regional Administrative Court [\u2026] I haven\u2019t had this issue yet. I haven\u2019t even talked it through with my team. I don\u2019t know what stage this issue is at.\u201d<\/p>\n

A little less than a year after Zelenskyi\u2019s statement, NABU published<\/a> new covert recordings of conversations among the court\u2019s judges. The new recordings<\/a>, which were released in July 2020, allegedly contain conversations about influencing judges on Ukraine\u2019s Constitutional and Supreme Courts, as well as members of NABU, the High Qualification Commission of Judges, the State Bureau of Investigation and the police.<\/p>\n

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor\u2019s Office have since charged Vovk and his deputy Ablov again, as well as five other judges of the court. According to the investigation<\/a>, these judges are part of a \u201ccriminal organisation\u201d that has \u201cissued court decisions in their own interests, as well as the interests of political elites and business circles\u201d. In particular, the investigators claimed that \u201cthe head of the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court used a scheme to file artificial and fabricated administrative cases to his own court from fake civic organisations and individuals\u201d. These cases were then, according to NABU investigators, \u201cexamined very quickly and with a predetermined result.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vovk has denied these new allegations. \u201cIf we talk about law, and not about politics, then we should note that these new charges are based on the same facts as a year ago,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on Facebook in July. \u201cThese facts have already been assessed. Forensic analyses prove that these tapes have been fabricated. All conceivable norms of the Criminal Procedural Code have been violated.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a media interview<\/a>, Vovk went on to say that the tapes \u201care revenge for the fact that the Regional Administrative Court is independent\u201d, and that the court is \u201cone of the bastions of independence in the judicial branch\u201d. He also stated that Artem Sytnyk, director of NABU, is involved in several criminal cases under consideration at the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court and \u201cthese decisions are painful for him\u201d. In October, the court approved a decision to fire Sytnyk from his post at NABU, though the Ministry of Justice has said it will not carry out the decision.<\/p>\n

Zhernakov, of the DEJURE Foundation, told openDemocracy that if the court is abolished, some of its cases will be referred to the Supreme Court of Ukraine. \u201cThe only way to remove these judges from their posts is to liquidate this court,\u201d he says. \u201cThe only person who can do this is Zelenskyi, under the constitution. [Yet] he doesn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDeeply-rooted corruption\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In July this year, a public petition<\/a> demanding the court be shut down appeared<\/a> on the website of the Ukrainian President\u2019s Office. Its authors argued that the court had \u201clost its authority\u201d and that the recordings were evidence of \u201cdeeply-rooted corruption\u201d. The petition attracted the required number of signatures to prompt an official response; in October, Zelenskyi announced that he had issued instructions to begin \u201cappropriate consultations with Ukraine\u2019s Supreme Council of Justice to obtain the position of the constitutional body of judicial management.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are reasons to believe this process may not be entirely reliable. The Supreme Council of Justice \u2013 not to be confused with the High Qualification Commission of Judges \u2013 also appears in the NABU tapes. According to the investigation, the judges of the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court have also influenced the work of this body, which advises on the appointment and release of judges.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In summer 2019, NABU detectives and officials from the General Prosecutor\u2019s Office searched the Kyiv Regional Administrative Court. While the search was under way, NABU director Artem Sytnik\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}