Ukrainian judge Artur Yemelianov has acknowledged in an
online declaration that he owns a Breguet watch worth nearly a third of his
annual salary and keeps piles of cash.
On Jan. 12 he was suspended for three months after
prosecutors opened a criminal case against him related to how commercial law
cases were allocated to judges, according to statements by the Ukrainian High
Council of Justice and Yemelianov himself.
They accused him of rigging the process, which is supposed
to be random, by setting out rules establishing that only particular judges
could hear particular cases, court documents show.
The prosecutors also claim that Yemelianov nudged the judges
to deliver his preferred verdicts and would take judges off cases if they
refused to comply.
Ukraine is trying to show its international supporters and
lenders that it can tackle entrenched corruption, including in the judiciary.
The next payment of a $17.5 billion loan from the
International Monetary Fund will depend on Kiev showing progress on reforms
including anti-graft measures.
Yemelianov denies any wrongdoing and says his businesswoman
ex-wife gave him money that helped to fund his lifestyle.
He says the allegations that he rigged the case allocation
process were trumped up by his enemies in revenge for his attempts to stamp out
bribe-taking and to stop him securing a seat at a newly established Supreme
Court. His application could not be considered because of the criminal case
against him.
“The main goal was achieved - as soon as I was taken out of
the running in the competition (for the Supreme Court),” he said earlier this
month.
The case is still ongoing and until it is closed, he is
unable to travel abroad and his 1.5 million hryvnia ($56,944) bail money stays
with the court.
The prosecutors, according to their publicly available
statements, opened the Yemelianov case after tip-offs from other judges. The
prosecution service declined to comment on this story.
The Ukrainian government, activists and anti-corruption
officials have said the judiciary acts as a shield for corruption and distorts
the business environment.
The central bank complains that the judicial system has
hampered its efforts to shut down banks it believes are engaged in nefarious
practices such as money-laundering. It says that courts have given rulings that
allowed 12 banks to stay open when they should have been closed, according to
several central bank statements, most recently on May 11.
"We are all living in the real world and are well aware
that the judicial system is not clean, and bribery, and corruption and cronyism
exist there," Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko told Reuters in January.
“The weakest link in our fight against corruption is the
Ukrainian court,” Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said at a press conference
in April.
He was speaking shortly after Transparency International
released figures showing that Ukraine ranked 131 out of 176 countries in the
World Ranking of Corruption Perception.
CASH AND PORSCHES
The government launched a drive to fight corruption last
year under which judges and other public sector workers are required to detail
their wealth in an online database.
About 30 judges, with annual salaries ranging from
$10,000-$13,000, own Porsches, according to their declaration for 2015 and
others have big sums of cash.
Yemelianov declared a 2015 salary of 226,181 hryvnias
($10,354), a watch costing 68000 hryvnias and Blaser Repetierbuchse R8 Carbine
worth 113,000 hryvnias ($5,173), and cash in hryvnias, euros and dollars worth
the equivalent of $383,000, according the 2015 average rate.
In 2013, his family income included 930,000 hryvnias in
presents, prizes and wins.
The wealth declarations of some of Ukraine’s most famous
politicians and public officials have been pored over by the media and anti-corruption
activists. If the prosecutors are right, Yemelianov and others judges have a
pernicious influence on Ukraine’s business climate.
Yemelianov says the prosecutors accused him of rigging
thousands of cases but have not produced any evidence.
He submitted his grievances to the European Court of Human
Rights in April, and hopes the Court will take up his case and vindicate him.
He said he hopes the Court would “affirm the illegality of
the conduct of Ukraine and Ukrainian bodies, including law enforcement, towards
me and the violation of my rights as a citizen.”
"PANDORA'S BOX"
As part of the anti-corruption drive, the National Agency
for the Prevention of Corruption (NAZK), which is responsible for checking the
online declarations, is carrying out separate investigations into whether
officials obtained the wealth they detailed honestly.
An official at Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau NABU told
Reuters it had also begun investigations into the declarations of judges but
declined to name them or provide further details.
The IMF has urged NAZK and NABU to work more closely
together and said legislation must be passed by June to set up an
anti-corruption court as a condition of its aid program, according to an IMF
country report released in April.
As well as the online data base, the setting up of a Supreme
Court and anti-corruption court, Ukraine has removed judges' automatic immunity
from prosecution and stripped lawmakers of the power to appoint judges.
But Petrenko said it will be hard to reform the judiciary
while judges have an interest in throwing out corruption cases against public
officials to try and make sure other judges don't eventually turn the focus on
them.
"Will that judge take an objective decision? I think he
will not, because he understands that he will open Pandora's box and this
practice can be used against him," he said.
Reformist officials and ministers in the Ukrainian state
have complained their efforts to root out graft are resisted by MPs, ministers
and officials who profit from the current system.
"We feel the resistance of the old, unreformed
system," Artem Sytnyk, the head of the NABU told Reuters.
MONEY FROM HIS WIFE
Yemelianov says the bulk of his recent income comes from his
ex-wife, Svitlana Yemelianova, who is now in Vienna and gave him a 3 million
hryvnia ($137,333) loan in 2015 to finance his travel expenses to see their
three children.
"She's a wealthy woman, she has this money, she earns
as she did before. In order to regularly fly to see my daughter, I need to have
the necessary money. My salary is not enough for this," he said.
He says he was a successful lawyer until 2001. He says that
his ex-wife became a wealthy businesswoman and psychologist in Donetsk, which
has been under the control of Russian-backed separatists since an uprising
erupted in 2014.
She fled Donetsk as the fighting started and left behind
most of the documents related to her firms, Yemelianov said.
Efforts by Reuters to reach Svitlana Yemelianova in Vienna
were unsuccessful. Yemelianov declined to pass on her contact details to
Reuters.
Yemelianov said he did not know any details of his wife's
current businesses.
“I can’t tell you what kind of profits there were (at her
businesses), but it’s a fact that none of them had zero income.”
Reported by Matthias Williams
