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HOT ANTICORRUPTION NEWS / Issue #135
February 14, 2020
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Today's issue:
- illegal attempts to dismiss NABU director (update);
- Supreme Court threatens the electronic asset declaration system;
- groundless accusations of NABU for illegal wiretapping;
- HACC denies returning prosecutor to Martynenko's case;
- recommended reading
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Illegal attempts to dismiss NABU director (update)
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On February 7, the Parliament registered draft resolution No.3039 aimed at the dismissal of NABU director Artem Sytnyk. 216 lawmakers initially supported this sham process by signing the draft resolution. The text of the draft resolution has not been available on the Rada website until Wednesday, February 12. Informal talks to some MPs showed they did not see the text of the draft resolution and did not know which grounds for dismissal it stated when they signed the document. More details are available in our recent op-ed for Kyivpost.
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The draft petition does not give the justification for the dismissal, it just cites the norm of the law. The norm concerns the qualification criteria for the position of the director: person fined for administrative corruption offence during the previous two years cannot be selected for the position of director. However, this norm applies only to the selection procedure and cannot be applied to the procedure of dismissal as the law specifically envisages different selection and dismissal criteria for the director. At the moment, there are no legal grounds for dismissal of NABU director. Please see our updated legal analysis of the issue here.
Also, the detailed legal analysis of the issue was prepared by expert Mykola Khavroniuk from the Centre of Political and Legal Reforms.
G7 Ambassadors made their statement to support NABU independence. We appreciate the prompt and coherent position of the international community. The reactions to the further developments of this case are critically important.
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Supreme Court threatens the electronic asset declaration system
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On January 28, 2020, the Supreme Court of Ukraine upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal of Cherkasy region, which had cancelled the conviction of the tax inspector for failure to submit e-declaration because of her religious beliefs.
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This is a very dangerous practice, because this decision, in fact, provides the right not to submit the e-declaration with impunity. The purpose of such steps is to kill the e-declaration. Therefore, it is difficult to call it the protection of human rights. Now anybody can claim that e-declarations violate their religious beliefs and there is no way to verify whether it is true. Please see more information here.
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Groundless accusations of NABU for illegal wiretapping
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On February 13, 2020, some media spread the news that NABU illegally wiretapped the synagogue back in 2017. This accusation is totally groundless and drags religious institution into the media smear campaign presumably initiated by the defence of suspects of so-called Zolotyi Mandaryn case to discredit NABU investigation and put pressure on the court.
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Firstly, NABU did not have wiretapping capacities in 2017. Secondly, the published document (if it is a real one) constitutes the memo of dislclosure of covert investigative actions. The memo concerns not wiretapping, but audio recording made by the cooperative witness all around the city including at the premises of synagogue. The recording was legal and sanctioned by court. However, the publication of such document is a violation of the secrecy of investigation and also may blow the cover and endanger the life of the witness.
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HACC denies returning prosecutor to Martynenko's case
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On February 11, judges of the Chamber of Appeal of the Anti-Corruption Court under the chairmanship of Daniyila Chornenka denied the appeal of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office regarding actual return of the prosecutor Andriy Perov to the case of former MP Mykola Martynenko. He was withdrawn in 2018 by Shevchenkivskyi District Court thanks to lawyers’ speculation that Perov slammed the door too loudly and thus disrespected the court. Please see more information here.
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