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HOT ANTICORRUPTION NEWS / Issue #131
January 17, 2020
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Today's issue:
- judicial reform updates;
- Kolomoisky floods courts with lawsuits concerning Privatbank;
- Avakov seeks excessive authorities by giving intelligence powers to the National Guard;
- the draft law that will allow the SBU to take over any case submitted to Rada;
- the first declarations of SBU officials appeared in the NAPC’s registry;
- NGOs call on MPs to appoint Yevgeniya Zakrevska as member of the selection panel for the SBI director;
- NABU uncovered bribery scheme in Odesa tax service;
- AntAC relaunches Serpom (Rating Reaper) project;
- meet our new team member;
- recommended reading
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Zelenskyi’s judicial reform: the High Council of Justice (HCJ) finally failed the restart of the High Qualification Commission of Judges
January 13 was the last day to submit applications for the competition to the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ).
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The deadline to delegate foreign experts to the HQCJ selection panel expired on January 2. Back in December 2019, the HCJ approved the rules of procedure for the HQCJ competition which nullified the role of foreign experts during the selections. It was never changed. By doing this, the HCJ has blocked the competition, and therefore, international partners refused to legitimize imitation of the judicial reform by their participation. More information here.
In the meantime, as a reminder, the international partners nominated foreign experts to the Ethics Commission, tasked with cleansing the HCJ from dubious members, on November 27, 2019. Almost two months have passed, but the HCJ still hasn't delegated their quota to the Commission.
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The HCJ unreasonably refused to consider the appeal against judges who took into account never-provided evidence in the case of Trukhanov
The High Council of Justice (HCJ) refused to consider the appeal of the AntAC and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) against judges of Malynovskyi District Court of Odesa, namely Sergiy Cherevko, Dmytro Perederko, and Viktor Koroy. With gross violations, they declared the Mayor of Odesa Gennadiy Trukhanov and his accomplices not guilty in the case regarding theft of UAH 92 million from Odesa City Council. More information here.
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The HCJ refused to punish judges of scandalous District Administrative Court of Kyiv, who had ruled privatization of Privatbank illegal
The Second Disciplinary Chamber of the HCJ refused to open a disciplinary case regarding the appeal of the National Bank against judges of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv, who had ruled the privatization of Pryvatbank illegal. This regarded judges Kachur Igor Anatoliyovych, Keleberd Volodymyr Ivanovych, and Amelyokhin Vitaliy Vyacheslavovych. Members of the HCJ did not even take the appeal for consideration. Namely, they refused to examine judges. More information here.
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Without foreign experts but with judicial clans: how MP Buzhanskyi helps the HCJ to fail the judicial reform
The draft law #2712, which completely neutralizes the judicial reform initiated by President Zelenskyi, was registered in the Verkhovna Rada by MP Maksym Buzhansky of "Sluga Narodu". He suggests to completely exclude foreign experts from the process and allow the old judicial system to occupy most of the positions in the High Qualification Commission of Judges without competition. More information here.
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Kolomoisky floods courts with lawsuits concerning Privatbank
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During December 2019 and early January 2020, different legal entities connected to oligarch Igor Kolomoisky filed almost 285 lawsuits against Privatbank. The lawsuits concern various aspects of nationalization of Privatbank and its loans given to companies associated with Kolomoisky. Presumably, such a "legal" activation of Kolomoisky is related to meddling with existing court disputes between Kolomoisky and Privatbank in Ukraine and the United Kingdom. More details here (in Ukrainian)
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Avakov seeks excessive authorities by giving intelligence powers to the National Guard
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On January 15, Rada Committee on Homeland Security, Defense and Intelligence upheld the draft law #2412 “On Intelligence” for the repeated first reading. On January 16, the draft law was adopted by the Parliament in the first reading.
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One of the riskiest norms in the version proposed by the Committee provides the National Guard with the status of the military intelligence unit. The suggested norms are not yet available on the Parliament's website as they have been announced orally during the Committee's meeting.
Our analysis show that these norms will give extraordinary and excessive powers to the Minister of Interior. The norms allow to attract the National Guard, which is under control of the Minister, to perform intelligence tasks. The wording of project is so broad and general that in practice it can go far beyond the scope of intelligence during performing military tasks and is prone for further abuse of power. Here is our provision-by-provision review of the draft law.
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The draft law that will allow the SBU to take over any case submitted to Rada
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The draft law that will allow the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to take over any case from any other law enforcement agency was registered in the Verkhovna Rada. The criterion on which the authors suggest to transfer cases will be a decision that the case threatens the national security. Almost any case can fall within the criterion of such a “threat”.
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This draft law actually strengthens the investigative powers of the Service, although, experts and international partners recommend to take away this function from the SBU. Our analysis of the draft law.
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The first declarations of SBU officials appeared in the NAPC’s registry
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Declarations that were classified and were not publicly available began to appear in the Registry of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention. The first one was the declaration of the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasyl Grytsak.
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In October 2019, President Zelenskyi signed the law regarding the restart of the NAPC. Important provisions of this law also affected the leadership of the SBU and other security forces. From now on, all officials of the SBU, other security forces and intelligence officers appointed by public acts of the President or the Verkhovna Rada must submit open declarations.
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NGOs call on MPs to appoint Yevgeniya Zakrevska as member of the selection panel for the SBI director
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January 27 is the deadline for the Parliament to appoint members to the selection panel for the SBI director under Parliamentary quota. The Rada Committee on Legislative Support of Law Enforcement initially planned to decide on this issue on January 17, however, they postponed the meeting until January 27.
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The NGOs working in the field of human rights protection, anti-corruption, law enforcement, and judiciary called on MPs to appoint Yevgeniya Zakrevska to the panel. Yevgeniya is professional lawyer, attorney of families of Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, human rights activist. Recently, she went on a hunger strike for the sake of preserving achievements of the investigations of crimes committed during the Revolution of Dignity. She held it until the result was achieved.
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NABU uncovered bribery scheme in Odesa tax service
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On January 13, 2020, NABU gave notices of suspicion to the Acting Head of Main Department of Odesa Regional State Tax Service of Ukraine and her Deputy. The investigation revealed that the tax official offered a local prosecutor to provide him with a monthly payment of $25,000. In exchange, he was supposed not to counteract the illegal activities of tax officials related to receiving improper advantage from entrepreneurs.
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Notably, the wiretaps reveal that tax officials were afraid of NABU attention as 'they are impossible to bribe'
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AntAC relaunches Serpom (Rating Reaper) project
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On January 13, AntAC relaunched the crowd-funding and community mobilization project Serpom - Rating Reaper.
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The project aims at individual MPs and political parties bear real political responsibility for their activity in the Parliament considering what draft laws they register, what they vote for, what amendments they make etc. Then we communicate the red lines which they cross directly to their voters. During the first few hours of work, the project gathered the necessary sum for the campaign regarding MP Oleksandr Dubinsky.
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Please welcome in our team
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We are happy to welcome Tetiana Shevchuk in our international relations team! Tetiana is legal counsel with AntAC, her focus is on anti-corruption and judiciary reforms, asset recovery, and anti-money laundering initiatives. Starting from January 2020, she joined our international team. We are excited to have her with us, and we hope that you will enjoy working with her as well.
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