A Kyiv judge who heard controversial cases involving allegedly illegal construction was slain in his own home on March 21.
A suspect has been arrested and two more were being sought.
The assassination of 42-year-old Serhiy Zubkov, praised for the integrity of his rulings, was obviously planned in advance, police said.
A Kyiv man was arrested the day after the murder and is being questioned. “He was affected by the ruling of judge Zubkov when he was evicted from his apartment. We suspect revenge was the motive of the murder,” said Interior Minister Anatoliy Mohylyov at a March 24 press conference.
Police are also looking for two accomplices.
Crime scene.
Zubkov was the target of an angry open letter addressed to him and published online just days before the tragedy. In the letter, a Kyivan accused Zubkov of evicting his family from their apartment as part of a case that the judge heard. In the case, Zubkov honored a Holland company’s claim to the apartment. The letter writer accused Zubkov of “lawlessness.”
However, Mohylyov wouldn’t say whether the author of the letter and the arrested suspect are the same person.
The slaying of a judge is a gruesome setback for Ukraine’s halting transition, now two decades in the making, from lawless former Soviet republic to modern, law-abiding democracy. If judges cannot be protected, then confidence in the judicial system could further be eroded.
Two men, one of them in a wheelchair, entered around 6 p.m. The men entered the elevator and minutes later came down. They were both running and the wheelchair was nowhere to be seen.”
– Building concierge.
The killers fooled a concierge to gain access to the house on 13 Holosiivska St., where Zubkov lived with his wife and daughter.
“Two men, one of them in a wheelchair, entered around 6 p.m.,” said a building concierge, recounting what a colleague on duty told her. “The men entered the elevator and minutes later came down. They were both running and the wheelchair was nowhere to be seen.”
According to the concierge, one of the men pointed a gun at her colleague on duty, who suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized.
Police say the concierge and an elevator repair worker were the only people who saw the killers. Some neighbors of Zubkov, who declined to give their names because they feared for their safety, told the Kyiv Post that Zubkov was recently complaining about threats because of his work.
Some colleagues of Zubkov, writing on a website shevchenkovskiy-sud.jurportal.org, wrote that they were aware of threats to the judge and that he had many enemies among those “harmed by his decisions in court.”
According to Segodnya newspaper, which spoke to Zubkov’s colleagues, he was set to be transferred to the Appellate Commercial Court. According to an unnamed source of the Internet news site Censor.net, the High Council of Justice was about to consider Zubkov’s dismissal on March 24 due to “many complaints.”
Zubkov made the news on Nov. 22 when he ruled on a controversial residential construction on Honchara Street. The construction of a nine-story building there is considered by experts and the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization to be harmful to the 11th century St. Sophia Cathedral nearby.
At court we were told that Zubkov is one of their best judges. He was a professional. People respected him.”
– Iryna Nikiforova, an anti-construction activist.
In October 2009, UNESCO sought a halt to the construction and the Kyiv city council agreed. Zubkov ruled that the construction should be stopped. However, the construction later resumed.
On Jan. 15, Zubkov also heard a case on another controversial housing project involving the grounds of Zhovtneva Hospital. According to Zubkov’s ruling, the construction was harmful to nearby buildings.
“At court we were told that Zubkov is one of their best judges,” said Iryna Nikiforova, an anti-construction activist. “He was a professional. People respected him.”
Ihor Lutsenko, an activist of the Save Old Kyiv organization, said that in both the Honchara Street and Zhovtneva Hospital cases, Zubkov was honest despite probably being offered money by different sides in cases he heard. “Zubkov declined and now he is dead,” Lutsenko said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected].
