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Eastern Europe
June 15, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
Ukraine NGOs slam new anti-corruption court loophole amid uncertainty over IMF tranche
Sergei Kuznetsov in Kyiv
Ukrainian NGOs slammed an apparent loophole in- serted into the new anti-corruption court (ACC) legis- lation at the last minute that could defang the west- ern-backed initiative by allowing all appeals against the court’s rulings to be heard in regular courts.
If Ukraine’s international donors are not satisfied with the court then the International Monetary Fund (IMF) $17.5bn standby programme could be suspended and that may mean Ukraine will face a debt crisis possibly as soon as next year.
The newly-adopted law necessary to set up an independent ACC in Ukraine fails to meet Kyiv's promises to Western donors and backers as appeals in cases of high-level corruption will be considered by the ordinary appellate courts instead of the anticorruption court, Kyiv-based NGO Anti-Corruption Action Centre (ANTAC) said in a statement on June 13.
The provision emerged in the text of the amendments, handed over to the committee members one hour before the final voting, according to the statement.
“This amendment neither was voiced by the Head of the Committee on legal policy and justice Ruslan Kniazevych at the plenary before voting in the sec- ond reading, nor it was discussed during the Com- mittee hearing. This amendment was also missing in the proposed by the Committee version of the comparative table for the second reading, pub- lished on the website of the Verkhovna Rada. The provision emerged in the text of the amendments,
Ukraine has set up an Anti-Corruption Court but a loophole may not satisfy donors.
handed over to the Committee members one hour before the final voting, and today — in the published law,” ANTAC said in its statement.
The law envisages that cases investigated by the country's main anti-graft agency, the National Anti- Corruption Bureau (NABU), consideration of which started in the ordinary first instance courts, will be finished in the ordinary appellate courts, circum- venting the anticorruption court, ANTAC added.
NABU is the investigative part of a triumvirate that also includes the Special Anti-Corruption Pros- ecutor’s Office (SAPO), which carries out the pros- ecutions in parallel to the General Prosecutor’s Office, but is also entirely independent from the government’s control. What has been missing is an independent court to hear the cases investigated by NABU and prosecuted by SAPO – the ACC court.
At the same time, according to previous agreements with international partners, the appellate proce- dure in cases currently considered by the ordinary courts was supposed to be held in the appeal cham- ber of the anticorruption court, the NGO added.
The establishing of the anti-corruption court
is a crucial condition for a new tranche from the $17.5bn support package agreed by Kyiv with the IMF in 2015. Ukraine has received $8.4bn from the IMF so far under the lender's programme.
However, the IMF and other crucial donors have yet to comment on the law so far.