Poltava’s Kyivsky Court on Aug. 10 closed a kidnapping case against Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes.
Kernes and two of his security guards were accused of kidnaping two EuroMaidan Revolution activists, torturing them and threatening to kill them in January 2014.
According to the activists’ testimony, Kernes ordered their kidnapping, questioned them himself and beat them. Kernes denies the accusations.
The court said that none of the 19 prosecutors in the case had attended the seven latest hearings, and it took this as their refusal to prosecute Kernes.
However, Deputy Prosecutor General Anzhela Stryzhevska said on Aug. 10 that prosecutors had not refused to prosecute Kernes.
Stryzhevska said that the prosecutors had not been notified of the Aug. 10 hearing and that they had informed the court that some were on sick leave, and asked it to delay the hearings.
She also said that the Prosecutor General’s Office would appeal against the court’s ruling and had opened a criminal case against the judge, accusing him of issuing an unlawful ruling.
Stryzhevska has been implicated in a corruption scandal herself, although she denies the accusations of wrongdoing. Stryzhevska and her fellow Deputy Prosecutor General Eugene Enin met with ex-Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky in 2016 in Israel to negotiate the charges against him, according to an audio recording of the meeting leaked to the Slidstvo.info investigative show and published in June. According to another tape released by Slidstvo.info, Stavytsky and an unidentified mediator discuss a future meeting with Stryzhevska, and the mediator says he will bring and offer her “200” – presumably a bribe of $200,000.
The decision to close the Kernes case due to prosecutors’ failure to attend hearings is unprecedented legal nonsense, Poltava-based whistleblower Judge Larysa Golnyk and lawyer Vitaly Tytych, a member of the Public Integrity Council, told the Kyiv Post.
Moreover, since the court decided to close the case completely, instead of convicting or acquitting Kernes, the appeals court will have no right to convict him and may only order a re-trial, she said. Such a re-trial may last for a long time, Golnyk said.
Dmytro Balukh, the head of the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center and a member of Kharkiv Oblast’s legislature, told the Kyiv Post the closure of the Kernes case was most likely the result of a deal between the mayor and President Petro Poroshenko ahead of the 2019 presidential election.
The Presidential Administration did not respond to a request for comment.
Kernes was put under partial house arrest in March 2014 and released in April 2014. The kidnapping case against him was sent to court in March 2015.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in July 2017 that prosecutors were preparing to charge Kernes in an abuse of power case involving the allocation of land. However, he has not been charged so far.
Kernes co-organized a separatist congress in Kharkiv on Feb. 22, 2014 and attended a pro-Russian rally on March 1, 2014.
In 1992 Kernes was also sentenced by a Kharkiv court to three years in prison for robbery and fraud.
The collapse of the Kernes case follows the closure of the embezzlement case against Interior Minister Arsen Avakov’s son Oleksandr Avakov and the minister’s ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar on July 12.
Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky’s office said that alleged accomplice Volodymyr Lytvyn had pled guilty to fraud and document forgery and given testimony that Oleksandr Avakov and Chebotar had not been involved in the scheme. This version contradicts the video footage investigated by NABU in which Chebotar and Oleksandr Avakov negotiate the corrupt deal.
