Anticorruption Committee of the Parliament will attemp to select candidate for NABU auditor on June 21st

 

On June 21st a meeting of the Anticorruption Committee is scheduled. According to our information, members of the Committee from Poroshenko’s Block will once again demand to adopt the decision on candidates for NABU auditor without interviewing the candidates. On the last meeting of the Committee members of the Committee from Poroshenko’s Block emphasized that the candidate should be a Ukrainian citizen, who has enough time to spend on the audit.

International Donors Presented Joint Vision of the Anti-corruption Court for Ukraine

On June 16th experts of international donors presented joint vision of creation of the anti-corrupton court for Ukraine. The vision was developed by the informal working group and offered for consideration to the Council on Judicial Reform under the President of Ukraine as well as to the Parliamentary Committee on Judiciary and the Committee on Combating Corruption.

The vision offers Ukraine to implement the following steps to ensure independence and efficiency of the Anticorruption court:

  • additional measures for trustworthy selection of anti-corruption judges - selection through special panel with majority of members being recommended by international donors, who provide assistance to Ukraine in the field of anti-corruption;
  • exclusive jurisdiction - over cases investigated by National Anticorruption Bureau;
  • creation of the High Anti-corruption Court as first instance court and special appeal chamber within the same court to serve as second instance. The appeal chamber must be located in the separate building;
  • opportunity for wide circle of judges, lawyers and scientists to compete for positions of anticorruption judges.

Authors of the concept confirmed readiness to provide necessary assistance for Ukrainian stakeholders for development of a draft law based on respective concept.

MPs who registered the draft law #6011 on anti-corruption court emphasized their readiness to amend the draft law according to recommendations of the international community or to repeal the draft should the President accept the concept for his own draft law.

For more details on common vision on anticorruption court offered by the international community please see the article from Eka Tkeshelashvili, the Head of  EU Anti-corruption Initiative in Ukraine.
 

Background:
As of now, there are two draft laws on anti-corruption judicial institutions registered in the Parliament.Draft law #6011 by MPs E. Sobolev, O.Syroid, S. Leshchenko, S. Zalischyk and I. Krylko, offering to create High Anti-corruption Court and to select anti-corruption judges through special selection panel with experts nominated by international partners of Ukraine. Draft law #6529 by MP S.Alekseev (Petro Poroshenko’s Block), offering to abolish provisions on creation of High Anti-corruption Court and instead to introduce anti-corruption specialization of existing judges in unreformed local courts. Read the detailed comparative analysis of these draft laws.
 

Supreme Court Selection: What's New?

On June 15th and June 16th the High Qualification Commission of Judges continued final consideration of candidates to the Supreme Court, who received negative opinions from the Public Integrity Council (PIC). As of June 16th, overall result of the plenary sessions of the Commission are as follows:

13
candidates were disqualified based on the  negative opinions of the PIC

28
negative opinions of the PIC were overruled by the Commission

Among candidates on whom negative opinions from the Public Integrity Council were overruled there are judges, who’s decisions were considered by the European Courts of Human Rights as violating the European Convention on Human Rights and Basic Freedoms.

To overrule the negative opinion of the Public Integrity Council, the Commission needs 11 out of 16 votes from its members. Despite numerous public requests, the Commission refused to disclose personalized results of its votings.  

At the same time, new Supreme Court will not become operational until new  codes of procedure are adopted. With only two plenary weeks left before summer break, the Paliament has failed to consider draft law on new codes even in the first hearing. Without new Codes of Procedures, old Supreme Court and old High Courts will continue to function even after judges for the new Supreme are appointed.

National Police Conducts Searches in the Office of Rouslan Radetskyi From NAPC

 

The searches are conducted within criminal investigation of alleged violation of procedure of obtaining advocate license. Police seized Rouslan Radetskyi license for the right to be an advocate. Details of the investigation are not available yet.
 

AntAC Went to Court to Verify Legal Grounds for Hiding E-declarations of Military Prosecutors

Anti-corruption Action Center filed the case to the Administrative court of Kyiv against decision of the Chief military prosecutor Matios and the Agency for prevention of corruption to close public access to e-declarations of military prosecutors.

The Court opened a judicial proceeding. In April 2017 NAPC upon request from the Chief military prosecutor Matios closed public access to e-declarations of more than 200 military prosecutors. Matios claimed that such a decision was in line with the law on state protection for official of judicial and law-enforcement bodies, that provides for measures to ensure confidentiality of information about respective people for security reasons.

However, legal analysis (available in Ukrainian) of respective law shows that confidentiality measures should be applied to prevent disclosure of information regarding place of residence of such people. Since public registry of e-declarations does not display information on the place of residence of declarants, there are no legal grounds for closing access to e-declarations.  

To create legal opportunity to hide from the public e-declarations of prosecutors and any law-enforcement or military official, representatives of Prosecutor’s General Office and the Agency for Prevention of Corruption developed a draft law (overview in Ukrainian) that creates unlimited opportunities for closing public access to e-declarations of any public official. The draft law:

  • offers military officials and officials of the State Agency for Special Communications to submit paper declarations instead of e-declarations;
  • allows state bodies that deal with security to close public access to information about their officials from all state registries;
  • closes public access  to declarations of all officials that perform any functions pertaining to anti-terrorist operation.

The draft law was discussed at meeting of the Anti-corruption committee of the parliament on June 15th. The Chief military prosecutor Matios claimed that abolishing public access to e-declarations of military officials and prosecutors must be seen as security measure. However, members of the committee rejected the draft law and the idea behind it under the reasoning that the registry of e-declarations does not display any personal information like identity numbers or place of residence of a person.

Selective Approach of SAP in Investigation of Corruption Cases in Healthcare Sector

AntAC Board member Oleksandra Ustinova in her article analysis recent decision of the specialized anti-corruption prosecution to close the criminal case against Svyatoslav Protas, chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine.

Mr. Protas was caught on bribe by NABU back in June 2016. On March 2017 SAP decided to close the case. Such a decision was contested by NABU to Prosecutor General Lutsenko, who supported the position of SAP. Oleksandra compares such reluctance of SAPO to move forward with another recent criminal case against senior officials of the Ministry of Healthcare. This investigation was triggered by SAP based on publication of false statement at unreliable media, which later even deleted the publication. Read the full story.
 

Prosecutor General Announced Recovery of $500 000

On June 15 Yuri Lutsenko informed that $500 000 will be recovered soon from abroad to Ukraine. He explained that these are assets allegedly embezzled by the Ministry of Justice during Yanukovych presidency.

Ministry of Justice officials allegedly transferred the funds to the accounts of foreign company for providing fictitious services. Prosecutor General informed that the recovery was possible because of joint close cooperation between his agency’s international department and the US Department of Justice.

AntAC welcomes such achievements of the PG in asset recovery work, but to assess them unbiasedly and professionally calls Mr. Lutsenko to provide more details about assets he claims to be recovered. Specifically, we urge PGO to unveil access to the court decision on confiscation of $1.5 bln of alleged Yanukovych assets in bonds. The recovery was reported back in May 2017, but the court decision is still not available.  

In addition, Mr. Lutsenko reported back in February 2017, that his agency recovered 10 bln UAH during 2016. Journalists from Nashi Groshi analyzed all court decisions PG was referring to and were not able to confirm such a results. Moreover, Nashi Groshi prepared a detailed analysis of problems in such asset recovery statistics.

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