Police
have detained one figure allegedly involved in corruption at the Kyiv Court of Appeals - Dmytro Chernushenko - but his father, accused of abusing his power to hand down
custom-made rulings, is still on the lam.
The
Prosecutor General’s Office on July 3 announced that Dmytro Chernushenko had
been taken into custody on July 2. He is accused of sending his father, head of
the Appeals Court Anton Chernushenko, text messages with detailed instructions
on how to proceed in court cases.
The
scandal began in late June, when the Security Service of Ukraine began
investigating the elder Chernushenko’s activities and conducted a search of his
property. General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin said at the time that the search
revealed $6,500 in cash, Hr 30,000, and keys for five different cars registered
to Anton Chernushenko’s relatives.
The
Verkhovna Rada approved a request for Chernushenko’s detention on July 1, but
the head of the Appeals Court failed to show up to work the next day and his
whereabouts remain unknown.
The
General Prosecutor’s Office was cited by Radio Liberty as saying prosecutors knew
where Chernushenko was, but would not disclose it.
Repeated
calls by the Kyiv Post to the spokesman for the General Prosecutor’s Office
went unanswered.
Olena Hitlianska, a
spokeswoman for the Security Service, said she had no information on Chernushenko’s
whereabouts and directed the Kyiv Post to the General Prosecutor’s Office for
inquiries on the matter.
The father-son act has
made a massive dent in the integrity of Ukraine’s judicial system, with two
years’ of rulings by the Appeals Court now under scrutiny.
An
online statement published by prosecutors on July 3 said the younger
Chernushenko had been sending his father text messages from January 2013 to
June 2015 – meaning many court rulings handed down during that time may have
been paid for. Documents are being prepared for investigators to decide on
pre-trial detention measures, the statement said.
Earlier,
Hitlianska said the Security Service planned to check each and every ruling
handed down by Chernushenko.
Lawmaker
Anton Gerashchenko, who first sounded the alarm over the text messages to the
judge, wrote on his Facebook page on June 25 that the SMSs provided very
detailed instructions on how to decide cases.
“In
some of the text messages, the names of the figures involved in the case were
indicated, and some contained the case number from the state register and
recommendations on what needs to be done: ‘release on house arrest,’ ‘lower
bail from Hr 30 million to Hr 500,000,’ ‘postpone the case’ and so on,” Gerashchenko
wrote.
“If Anton Chernushenko
had gone to work in business, since this person is far from stupid, he could
have earned good money, or as a lawyer or entrepreneur, he could have paid his
taxes and lived peacefully. But he chose a different path, like a large portion
of judges in Ukraine – using his authority to get rich,” Gerashchenko wrote.
Chernushenko denied the
accusations of foul play at the time and said he’d been saving the money discovered
in his home to pay for dental treatment.
After he failed to show
up to work this week, his wife told Ukrainian media that her husband was “on
vacation.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at
a.caseyquinn@gmail.
