KYIV – A last-minute change to a bill for creating a separate court to prosecute corrupt officials will temporarily bypass the judiciary body during appeals in cases that a newly formed graft-fighting investigative bureau sends to courts.
Forming the High Anti-Corruption Court is a precondition to further unlocking a vital $17.5 assistance package from the International Monetary Fund. High-level Ukrainian officials said it is compliant with the Washington-based lender’s demands and that $2 billion in renewed funding would be available by autumn after the bill was passed on June 7.
However, anti-corruption watchdog Antac said on June 13 that it spotted a deficiency in the bill once it was made public after its signing. In particular, it contains a clause that “circumvents” the anti-corruption court in appealed cases that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) sends to courts before the judiciary body is formed, Vitaliy Shabunin, head of Antac’s board, said in a statement.
Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, head of the local chapter of the Berlin-based Transparency International graft watchdog, separately said that the “mistake should be urgently corrected” legislatively with amendments.
The IMF had stipulated that Western corruption experts be part of the 12-panel commission that will select judges to the court, which appears to have been met. As of June 13, the IMF had not commented on the bill.
The international lender has indicated that it needs time to analyze the law to determine its compliance with the existing financial assistance package.
Additionally, a separate law needs to be passed for the actual creation of the graft-fighting court, and a second one to bring the law into line with the law “On the Judicial System and Status of Judges.”
At present, 50 of the 138 corruption cases that NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office submitted to Ukrainian courts aren’t being considered, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy said on Ukrainian television on June 7. Some haven’t been examined for six months, he added.