Authorities are taking action over investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap's April 1 reports on a group of Kyiv District Administrative Court judges who took multiple trips abroad over the past four years while issuing verdicts from cruise ships. Many of the rulings went against the state's interests and were in favor of alleged corruption and tax-evasion cases involving close allies of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
But it may not be the kind of action that society expects. Investigators are focusing on how Gnap got the information, not on the wrongdoing he exposed.
On June 16, Gnap, a journalist for Hromadske TV and Slidstvo.info, was called in for questioning as a witness related to his report by the Prosecutor General’s Office.
It was for “disclosure of documents with limited access” in a criminal case based on a legal complaint lodged by the Kyiv District Administrative Court. The judge who initiated the complaint, Ruslan Arsiniy – via Volodymyr Keleberda, the deputy head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court – had visited 11 countries, some three and two times, in 2011-2014.
Arsiniy had issued six verdicts while vacationing abroad, according to Gnap’s report on Slidstvo, although Arsiniy said it was only four. The act is illegal.
During an interview he gave in the report, he advised Gnap not to visit a foreign country on separate trips, and instead “take cruises” to see multiple countries during a single trip.
In the past four years Arsiniy visited China and Greece three times, Spain and Italy twice, and also traveled to France, Thailand, Cuba, the U.S., Jamaica, Haiti, and Mexico.
Judges make on average Hr 18,000 ($830) a month.
Arsiniy told Gnap that his “family’s funds” covered the costs of the foreign vacations.
He along with another globetrotting judge, Oleksiy Ohurtsov, who visited seven countries in 2012-2013, also with “family funds” – as well as Ihor Pohribnichenko, together issued a ruling that prevented the state from reclaiming 20 gas fields belonging to Golden Derrik during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych.
According to Gnap’s report, the firm is controlled by two people close to Yanukovych – former energy minister Eduard Stavitsky and ex-Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysiazhnyuk. Both are fugitives and their assets have been frozen by the European Union.
Investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap exposed judges who made questionable rulings while on vacation.
In addition, Ohurtsov in 2012 ruled to free from paying taxes a construction firm linked to Yanukovych’s former palatial estate Mezhyhirya, Elite Landshaft, from paying more than Hr 2 million in taxes.
He made two rulings while vacationing abroad, according to Gnap.
The journalist said that during interviews the judges didn’t deny taking the frequent vacations abroad and referred to the verdicts made while on vacations as “mistakes.”
However, the report “outraged” them because “we spoke the truth yet they feel this information should be proprietary,” Gnap told the Kyiv Post by phone on June 21.
He said lawmaker Yegor Sobolev, chairman of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, gave him the information on the judges. The military prosecutor’s office is handling the criminal investigation because it involves the Security Service of Ukraine, which presumably leaked the information.
The family of Judge Pavlo Vovk, who heads the Kyiv District Administrative Court, received Hr 400,000 last year in “gifts, prizes and winnings,” according to his income declaration, reported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The windfall was almost twice his yearly salary.
Vovk in 2011-2014 visited Italy four times, Greece, Spain and the United Arab Emirates twice, as well as France, Cuba, Turkey, Maldives, the U.S., Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Germany and Switzerland.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
