Ukrainian President: Anti-corruption Court should be created before the end of the year
According to the website of President Petro Poroshenko, the Head of State hopes that the creation of anti-corruption infrastructure will be completed before the next presidential elections in Ukraine.
"We have almost a year before the presidential elections, and I hope that we will be able to complete the creation of anti-corruption infrastructure, which, I would like to stress, is totally unprecedented in the world," Poroshenko said at a joint press conference with the Federal President of Germany. Poroshenko also claimed in his message that the Anti-Corruption Court should be created before the end of the year.
"Currently, the Parliament is considering almost two thousand amendments to this bill, but I sincerely hope that the Parliament will be able to adopt the relevant bill and we will be able to begin the process of creating an anticorruption court already in July this year. And this year, this process will be completed and Ukraine will have an anticorruption court," he said.
Poroshenko opposed the creation of an Anti-Corruption Court until the fall of 2017, but then, under pressure from the West, changed his position. A bill was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada on behalf of Poroshenko to establish such a court. The document was adopted in the first reading; the second reading will continue in June. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities have not yet coordinated with the West on the role of international experts in the selection of judges.
Poroshenko has shifted the deadlines for voting for the draft law on the creation of the Anti-Corruption Court and its actual formation several times. He previously called for the deadline for the creation of the court to be the end of 2018. The next presidential elections in Ukraine will be held in May 2019.
Cases being investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) are currently being considered by the Solomensky District Court of Kyiv (the NABU building is located in this capital district). The Bureau has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the decisions of this court and demanded the creation of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court. According to the idea, all NABU and SAP cases will be subject to this court, whose decisions may only be appealed in the Supreme Court.