Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt courts are vigorously resisting the lustration law, which envisages firing officials with undeclared property and those linked to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime.
The courts have consistently ruled in favor of lustrated officials on dubious grounds and in defiance of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department, critics say. As a result, the unreformed court system could completely derail the lustration process.
Moreover, very few judges have themselves been fired under another lustration law, which is supposed to clear court benches of judges who unlawfully prosecuted EuroMaidan activists.
Most lustrated officials have disputed their dismissals in court, Tetiana Kozachenko, head of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department, told the Kyiv Post.
And at least 15 fired top officials have already been re-instated by the courts, she said.
Despite the fact that the Justice Ministry is in charge of the lustration process, the courts have been quick to throw out lawsuits against officials who should be fired, claiming that the department’s interests are not affected, Dmytro Dymov, a deputy head of the ministry’s lustration department, told the Kyiv Post by phone.
A key lustration case is the one against Lyudmila Demchenko, the head of the State Fiscal Service’s Kyiv branch. “When Demchenko filed a lawsuit, the court registered the case within a day and called us the next day,” Kozachenko said. “It held two hearings in four working days.”
Demchenko is subject to lustration because she was a deputy head of Kyiv’s Pechersk district tax office during the EuroMaidan Revolution, the Justice Ministry says. She was fired in November 2015 but was re-instated by a court in December.
While the lustration law applies to “the central body that formulates and implements state tax and/or customs policy,” Demchenko claims that this wording means the Pechersk tax office is exempt from lustration.
In most cases lustration cases are suspended by the courts until the Constitutional Court issues a ruling on the matter, Dymov said.
But Kozachenko believes the current judges of the Constitutional Court have no right to rule on the issue, as six of them have conflicts of interest – they could themselves be subject to lustration.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating these six judges on suspicion of their complicity in the usurpation of power by ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Under the lustration law, those involved in the usurpation of power have to be dismissed.
Another conflict of interest involves Viktor Danylyshyn, a judge of the Kyiv District Administrative Court, Kozachenko said.
Danylyshin has issued rulings in favor of several lustrated officials, but is himself subject to lustration because he banned public gatherings in Kyiv during the EuroMaidan Revolution, according to the Temporary Special Commission for Inspecting Common-Jurisdiction Courts. Danylyshin is an acquaintance of Oleh Valendyuk, the acting head of the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, and ruled in Valendyuk’s favor in his lustration case, Dymov said.
Kyiv’s Administrative District Court told the Kyiv Post by e-mail last year that the lustration law did not apply to Danylyshin, but it did not explain why.
