Ukraine needs an effective procedure for cleansing the Supreme Court - AntAC

Ukraine should have an effective procedure for checking the integrity of Supreme Court judges so that it can be cleared. This opinion was expressed in an exclusive commentary to UNN by Olena Shcherban, Deputy Executive Director, Head of the Legal Department of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC).

 Here, the general recipe for all such cases (cases in which Supreme Court judges are compromised - ed.) will be the story of the Supreme Court's cleansing. And here, legislative initiatives are really needed, since there are no procedures for evaluating Supreme Court judges at the moment, but they need to be established, and it is necessary to be able to check the integrity of Supreme Court judges 

In particular, she recalled that the case against former Supreme Court Chief Justice Vsevolod Knyazev, who was detained for bribery, undermined confidence in the Supreme Court and members of the Grand Chamber were compromised. Therefore, according to Shcherban, they should not participate in meetings of the High Council of Justice, where issues of disciplinary responsibility of their colleagues are considered.

"Therefore, the first thing to do is to finally deal with the integrity of the Supreme Court judges, and in the future - to form a special panel or a special chamber of judges that can consider such issues," added Shcherban.

At the same time, she said, the judicial system has a practice of "circular bail" when the High Council of Justice makes decisions on the disciplinary responsibility of judges, and the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court cancels them and sends them back to the HCJ for reconsideration.

"But in general, the judiciary has a history of the kind of mutual cover-up you are talking about, which is inherent in principle. And that's why the HCJ was cleared, so that it would not work, so that the HCJ would not cover judges who commit disciplinary offenses. And we have already cleared the HCJ, cleared the HQCJ, the next stage is to clear the Supreme Court, that's all. And to provide procedures by which judges will understand that such ping-pong will not work and they will be held accountable for it - they may even pay for it with their position," Shcherban said.

Addendum 

Earlier, lawyer and executive director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Oleksandr Pavlichenko told UNN that the High Council of Justice is tasked with forming an independent judicial system in Ukraine without political influence.

Volodymyr Vatras, chairman of the subcommittee on the organization and activities of the Bar and legal aid bodies of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, also spoke about the need to cleanse the Supreme Court of judges who have compromised themselves.

Recall

A panel of the Supreme Court changed Shepelev's sentence in the escape from custody case and tried to release him. Judges Vyacheslav Marynych, Volodymyr Korol and Alla Makarovets decided to close one of the episodes of the case, which concerned bribery, due to what they considered insufficient evidence. As a result, the former MP's property will not be confiscated in this case. Although, according to experts interviewed by UNN , the Supreme Court judges did not have the right to directly examine any evidence.

In addition, the judges counted the period of Shepelev's stay in the Russian pre-trial detention center as part of the sentence. He was detained in Russia following an extradition request from Ukraine. A year later, Russia refused to extradite the fugitive ex-MP to Ukraine, citing threats to its own national security. It turned out that Shepelev was valuable to Russia because he was a FSB agent and agame player.

 The Supreme Court panel also used the Savchenko law and counted Shepeleva's time in the pre-trial detention center on charges in other cases as part of his sentence. The prosecutor appealed the actions of the judges of the Supreme Court to the HCJ.  

According to the automatic distribution, the complaint in Shepelev's case will be considered by the first ever HCJ member who fought at the front against Russia, Olena Kovbiy.