Gizo Uglava — reformer of the week
The Prosecutor General’s Office has opened an investigation against Gizo Uglava, a deputy chief of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), accusing him of hiding his Georgian citizenship and tax evasion, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said on May 24.
Uglava denied the accusations and interpreted the case as part of the authorities’ efforts to destroy Ukraine’s only independent law enforcement agency, which has prosecuted political heavyweights like State Fiscal Service Chief Roman Nasirov and ex-lawmaker Mykola Martynenko.
In March, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko failed to push through parliament the appointment of his loyalist, UK citizen Nigel Brown, as a NABU auditor in order to control the bureau, though Brown is now again competing for the job.
Petros Clerides, who is allegedly close to Poroshenko’s gray cardinal and lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, is competing for the job of the NABU auditor appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers, in a non-transparent and shady procedure. Clerides resigned as Cyprus’ attorney general amid a corruption scandal in 2013.
Meanwhile, parliament is set to consider a bill banning the anti-graft bureau from starting cases against top officials if other law enforcers had previously closed similar cases against them. Last year parliament failed to pass a similar bill to restrict the bureau’s independence.
Yevhen Ablov — anti-reformer of the week
The High Council of Justice on May 15 refused to fire or punish Yevhen Ablov, a judge of the Kyiv Administrative District Court who authorized riot police to crack down on EuroMaidan protesters on Dec. 9, 2013.
Two weeks after the ruling Ablov got a luxury apartment free of charge from the state. He sold it for Hr 9.1 million in 2016.
Previously the High Council of Justice also refused to fire under the lustration law other judges accused of unlawfully persecuting EuroMaidan protesters. These include Volodymyr Khimich, Viktor Kitsyuk, Vladyslav Devyatko, Mykola Chaus and Bohdan Sanin.
Another judge accused of unlawfully trying EuroMaidan demonstrators, Olena Lisovska, was on May 23 interviewed by the High Qualification Commission, which let her pass to the next stage of a competition for Supreme Court jobs. The High Council of Justice has missed many deadlines for firing judges under lustration and has dismissed only 33 and suspended five out of about 300 judges who persecuted EuroMaidan demonstrators.
Meanwhile, Kyiv’s Shevchenko District Court on May 5 refused to issue an arrest warrant in absentia for Rodion Kireev, a judge who presided over a show trial of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
