Former Ukrainian judge Mykola Chaus has been at the epicenter of a mix between an action movie and a tragicomedy in recent years.
Chaus, who once worked at Kyiv’s Dnipro District Court, was allegedly caught by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) receiving a $150,000 bribe in 2016, after which he fled to Moldova. He denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
He was kidnapped in Moldova by Ukrainian authorities on April 3, 2021, and transported back to Ukraine, according to Moldovan Prosecutor General Alexandru Stoianoglo.
Then Chaus re-emerged in Ukraine on July 30 and was detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which refused to transfer him to the NABU, which is investigating the Chaus bribery case.
Ukraine’s military intelligence denied involvement in Chaus’ kidnapping. And Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in April that “Ukraine was not involved in the situation with Chaus.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokesman Serhiy Nikiforov told the Kyiv Post that “Chaus was not kidnapped on the orders of the President’s Office.”
The events highlighted the lawlessness and impunity of law enforcement agencies under both Zelensky and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, who served from 2014-2019. Their opponents say that both presidents used Chaus as a pawn in their political games.
Poroshenko is accused of helping Chaus to flee in 2016 to prevent the exposure of his alleged dealings with the judge, while Zelensky is accused of kidnapping Chaus in 2021 to make him testify against Poroshenko and his allies.
“First intelligence agencies kidnapped Chaus in Moldova,” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, said on Facebook. “Then they staged his reappearance in Ukraine to legitimize his status and use him for the government’s political purposes. And this happened in a country at war that’s losing its fighters on the frontline every day.”
Chaus’ background
Chaus has a long history of controversy and allegedly criminal behavior. But the High Council of Justice, Ukraine’s discredited judicial governing body, has always let him off the hook – something that civic activists say shows a lack of judicial reform.
In 2010-2012, Chaus was probed by the High Council of Justice over allegedly unlawful rulings in eight criminal cases but the council decided not to fire him.
After the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, a special lustration commission and a sub-unit of the High Council of Justice recommended firing Chaus for unlawfully trying EuroMaidan activists. However, the council eventually refused to do so.
Under Poroshenko, anti-corruption activists accused Chaus of being under the control of Poroshenko and his top ally, lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky.
“I’ve never seen, heard or called Chaus and never talked to him,” Poroshenko said in 2019. “Fortunately I don’t know him.”
Hranovsky did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2015 Chaus issued an arrest warrant for Hennady Korban, a political opponent of Poroshenko and a former business partner of billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
Korban was charged in organized crime, embezzlement, kidnapping and hijacking cases — accusations that he denied and that were later dropped.
Poroshenko allies were allegedly involved in Chaus’ escape from Ukraine in 2016, according to a leaked 2020 document from Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court that referred to the NABU investigation against Chaus. The document was published by Moldova’s RISE Moldova news site and Ukraine’s Slidtsvo.info investigative journalism project.
Chaus’ flight from Ukraine was organized by Yury Fyodorov, one of Poroshenko’s security guards, Dorin Damir, an associate of Moldovan oligarch Plahotniuc, and Vyacheslav Turcu, a Moldovan-born resident of Ukraine, according to the document. Damir and Turcu denied the accusations.
Hranovsky was also implicated in helping Chaus to escape, according to the NABU.
Vasyl Burba, a Poroshenko protégé who headed Ukraine’s military intelligence in 2016-2020, could also have been involved in Chaus’ escape in 2016, according to a law enforcement source cited by the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper.
Burba was fired by Zelensky after he organized an operation to detain Russian mercenaries by having a plane carrying them make an emergency landing in Ukraine. The operation was allegedly foiled by the Zelensky administration, according to journalist investigations.
Chaus applied for asylum in Moldova but then Moldovan President Igor Dodon rejected his asylum request in 2017. The ex-judge appealed the decision in court.
In an April 4 interview with the strana.ua news site, Chaus’ wife Svitlana said that Hranovsky had ordered his associate, Serhiy Lysenko, to make Chaus submit a second asylum application. According to her, Lysenko came to Moldova on Jan. 18, broke the former judge’s door and scuffled with him. Strana.ua published a purported video of Lysenko’s visit.
The kidnappers
A Moldovan court was expected to make a final decision on Chaus’ asylum on April 28 but the ex-judge was kidnapped on April 3 before a hearing could take place.
While still in captivity, Chaus appeared in a Telegram video in May, claiming that he had been taken to Moldova by force in 2016. Chaus added that the people who had transported him to Moldova had threatened him and were afraid that he would expose them – a veiled reference to Poroshenko and his allies.
His wife and lawyer believe the statement was made under duress.
In July Moldovan Prosecutor General Stoianoglo said that Ukrainian “state institutions” and “special forces” were involved in Chaus’ kidnapping in April 2021.
The alleged kidnappers are linked to Ukraine’s military intelligence, according to an investigation by Slidtsvo.info and RISE Moldova.
One of them, Yury Kovalenko, studied at a military academy in Odesa, according to the report. In 2015 he was registered to a military unit based at the same address as Kyiv’s Military and Diplomatic Academy, which trains military intelligence officers.
In 2018 Kovalenko lived at the same address as the Defense Ministry’s main intelligence directorate on Kyiv’s Rybalsky Island. Kovalenko confirmed to Slidstvo.info that he had been in Moldova from March 24 until April 3 but declined to comment on any other issues.
Another suspect, Eduard Stavytsky – also known as Andriy Kutsenko – was registered at the same address as Ukraine’s Defense Ministry in the 2000s.
In 2009, Kutsenko also served in the military unit based on Rybalsky Island. Kutsenko denied working for military intelligence.
Slidtsvo.info also published a screenshot of video footage that shows people resembling Kutsenko and Kovalenko crossing the Moldovan-Ukrainian border near the town of Otaci in northern Moldova.
After the kidnapping, Chaus was held at a base of the State Border Guard in Kyiv’s Obolon District, according to sources cited by Ukrainska Pravda.
Chaus was transported to Ukraine in April in a car owned by the Ukrainian embassy in Moldova and driven by Serhiy Smetanyuk, a military attaché at the embassy, according to Slidtsvo.info. Smetanyuk refused to comment to Slidtsvo.info.
Re-appearance
But then the fugitive judge suddenly re-appeared in Ukraine.
Chaus came to the village council building in the village of Mazurivka in Vinnytsya Oblast on July 30. Chaus said that he had been kidnapped.
“He came here wearing shorts,” Valery Hrunkovsky, head of the village council, told Slidstvo.info. “He was dirty, with a naked torso. He was also hungry, and we fed him.”
Later employees of the Security Service of Ukraine came and took Chaus away.
Yury Butusov, chief editor of the censor.net news site, said that Chaus had allegedly reached a deal with the President’s Office that his case would be transferred from the NABU to the SBU in exchange for his cooperation with the President’s Office. Zelensky’s spokesman Nikiforov denied the President’s Office’s alleged involvement.
The NABU opened two abuse of power investigations against the SBU for hiding Chaus. Ukraine’s Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that a wanted person must be transferred to an authorized representative of the body that investigated him or her.
The NABU published a video of its employees following an SBU van with Chaus until the van entered the premises of the SBU headquarters in Kyiv. NABU detectives asked SBU employees to transfer Chaus to them but they did not react.
The SBU denied violating the law. The service argued that it had Chaus in its custody because it was investigating his kidnapping.
On Aug. 3, the NABU reached an agreement with the SBU and handed him a notice of suspicion while he was being treated at Kyiv’s Feofaniya hospital.
Prosecutors applied for sending Chaus to a detention facility at an Aug. 4 hearing of the High Anti-Corruption Court.
However, the court refused to jail Chaus and put him under house arrest. The judge will be surveilled by the SBU during his house arrest – a measure that may allow the security service to have him under control.
“Are there any doubts left that the SBU reform must be as profound as possible?” Shabunin said on Facebook. “Make the whole of the SBU a genuine intelligence service at last. Otherwise a major part of the SBU will keep hiding naked Chauses from the NABU.”
Kidnappers’ motives
Oleksandr Lemenov, head of anti-corruption watchdog StateWatch, argued that the military intelligence allegedly kidnapped Chaus to prevent him from getting into the NABU’s hands. If Chaus had been extradited to Ukraine instead of being kidnapped, he would have inevitably been transferred to the NABU.
The Zelensky administration wanted to control Chaus to attack Poroshenko by launching a public relations campaign against him and possibly charging him with helping Chaus to escape in 2016, Lemenov told the Kyiv Post.
“Poroshenko helped Chaus flee to further his interests, and Zelensky also used Chaus to promote his interests,” he added.
The Zelensky administration also needs Chaus to go after two major Poroshenko allies – Burba and Hranovsky, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources.
Another possible reason why Ukraine’s military intelligence allegedly kidnapped Chaus is to prevent him from testifying against Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Andriy Smyrnov.
The anti-corruption court document mentions that Smyrnov and lawyer Kim Veremeychuk were among the people who allegedly helped Chaus flee. According to the document, Smyrnov drove Chaus to his hiding place in the Alpine Residential Complex in Kyiv.
Smyrnov and Veremeychuk denied the accusations.
According to Chaus’ wife Svitlana, she was advised to hire Smyrnov and Kim Veremeychuk as lawyers by Chaus. She claimed that Hranovsky contacted her and her husband through Smyrnov, Veremeychuk and Serhiy Lysenko, a Hranovsky associate, when the couple was in Moldova. She also said that Smyrnov told her he was acting on Poroshenko’s behalf. Lysenko could not be reached for comment.
A law enforcement source told the Kyiv Post that Smyrnov could have taken part in organizing Chaus’ kidnapping in April and was “heavily involved” in the Chaus saga. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.
