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Twelve candidates have been nominated for the Public Council of International Experts for the creation of an anti-corruption court, according to a screenshot from the High Qualification Commission’s site obtained by the Kyiv Post from Vitaly Tytych, the coordinator of the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog.
However, the news has disappeared from the commission’s site and is not now available. Andriy Kozlov, a member of the High Qualification Commission, confirmed the authenticity of the list of nominees.
The Public Council of International Experts, a foreign advisory body, can influence the selection: In a situation in which there are doubts about a candidate’s professional integrity, source of wealth, or skills, the council can initiate a meeting with the High Qualification Commission and veto the candidate if at least four foreign experts out of six agree with the veto.
However, if the High Qualification Commission arbitrarily chooses exclusively political loyalists, it will not matter who is vetoed since the remaining candidates will also be loyalists, Tytych told the Kyiv Post.
The candidates include Aurelijus Gutauskas, a judge of Lithuania’s Supreme Court and an expert at Moneyval and the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption or GRECO; Flemming C. Denker, an ex-prosecutor from Denmark and former expert at GRECO and the Council of Europe; Claudia Mejia Escobar, an appellate court judge from Guatemala; Ted Zarzeczny, a Canadian judge, and Carlos Castresana Fernandez, a Spanish lawyer and former member of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala.
The other nominees are Giovanni Kessler, ex-director general of the European Anti-Fraud Office; Robert J. Cordy, an ex-justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; Mirjana Lazarova-Trajkovska, a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights and ex-member of the Venice Commission; Marguerite J. Trussler, the judicial ethics commissioner for Canada’s province of Alberta; Thomas Firestone, a U.S. lawyer; Lorna Harris, a former British prosecutor, and Sir Anthony Cooper; a former judge of the Court of Appeal in England and Wales.
A screenshot from the High Qualification Commission’s site with a list of nominees for the Public Council of International Experts.
Foreign organizations can nominate at least two candidates each, and the High Qualification Commission will choose six out of the total number.
According to a letter sent by the Foreign Ministry to the High Qualification Commission, the following organizations can delegate representatives to the Council of International Experts: the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN Human Rights Council, the Group of States Against Corruption, Moneyval (a Council of Europe body), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Europol, Eurojust, European Partners against Corruption, the European Anti-Fraud Office, the Financial Action Task Force, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Interpol, the World Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
As of now, 73 candidates have applied for 12 jobs at the High Anti-Corruption Court’s appeal chamber, and 162 candidates have applied for 27 other vacancies at the High Anti-Corruption Court.
Meanwhile, 485 candidates have applied for 78 extra Supreme Court jobs in addition to the 120 incumbent Supreme Court justices.
Tytych estimated the chances of creating a genuinely independent anti-corruption court as very low, given that what he views as the High Qualification Commission’s subjective and arbitrary assessment methodology for judges had not been changed. The commission has denied that its methodology is arbitrary.
During last year’s Supreme Court competition, 210 scores were assigned for anonymous legal knowledge and practical tests, and the High Qualification Commission could assign 790 points out of 1,000 points without giving any explicit reasons. To make the competition’s criteria objective, 750 points should be assigned for anonymous legal knowledge tests and practical tests, Tytych said.
USAID has recommended increasing the percentage of objective criteria in the methodology but the High Qualification Commission ignored the recommendations.
