Scandalous court rules to move forward with NABU head removal

The scandalous Kyiv District Administrative Ñourt
ordered on Oct. 26 the Single Information Registry to remove the record of
Artem Sytnyk as director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine
(NABU), the pravda.com.ua news site reported that day, citing an anonymous
source, who said NABU hasn’t received a copy of the ruling. It was the very
same NABU that presented audio evidence to the public – in July 2019 and July
2020 – of the corruption of the court,
led by the notorious judge Pavlo Vovk.

While Sytnyk remains as NABU director, the court is
also expected to submit an order to the State Bureau of Investigations to open
a criminal case against the bureau for failing to fulfill the ruling of the
Constitutional Court. On Aug. 28, this court ruled that President
Poroshenko exceeded his constitutional authority when
appointing Sytnyk in April 2015. The ruling was immediately endorsed by the
President Zelensky’s representative to the court.

The same day, a petition on the president’s website
gained the necessary 25,000 signatures to force Zelensky to consider submitting
to parliament a bill to liquidate the scandalous Kyiv District Administrative
Court. The petition, initiated by journalist Danylo Mokryk on July 30, states
the court has “fully lost its authority,” particularly after the released audio
recordings, “which demonstrate the corruption deeply rooted in the court and
its practice of unjust rulings.”

Zenon Zawada: Someone’s
in a hurry to remove Sytnyk. That’s because other authorities said a procedure
is not in place to remove and replace him. In mid-September, Prosecutor General
Iryna Venediktova called for the Constitutional Court or parliament to
implement a legal mechanism to remove Sytnyk, which was a sign of the Zelensky
administration backtracking its endorsement of Sytnyk’s dismissal.

Meanwhile, the parliament speaker Razumkov, an ally to
the president, has said the law needs to be changed to remove Sytnyk, which is
also a sign of members of Zelensky’s entourage wanting to back away from the
endorsement.

That this ruling was issued by the District
Administrative Court comes as no surprise. With his reputation utterly
compromised, Pavlo Vovk looks as though he’s willing to entertain any corrupt
demands in the little time he might have left to issue rulings.

So a critical battle is underway in the Zelensky
administration that could mark a fatal rift in its relations with the IMF and
the West. By interfering in this battle, Vovk’s court has raised the stakes.
Not only does Zelensky need to keep Sytnyk in place (even as a mere symbolic
gesture towards the West), but now he needs to get rid of Vovk, who is actively
working to undermine Ukraine’s relations with the West.

The Zelensky administration’s overall governing
approach is to satisfy the demands of those exerting the most pressure, except
when countervailing demands are necessary for Ukraine’s survival. So we expect
Zelensky’s people (particularly Andriy Yermak) will resort to their survival
instinct by keeping Sytnyk in place while arranging for the removal of Vovk (or
the liquidation of the scandalous court altogether).