KIEV, Ukraine -- Bribery is the only way to get a favorable ruling from a judge, lawyers say. Despite several high-profile arrests of judges suspected of taking bribes, people working in Ukraine’s judicial system say the courts are as corrupt as ever.
“Bribes are taken by everybody from chairman of the court to judge assistants,” said a lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s a practicing attorney who fears retribution if he is identified. “If one doesn’t take bribes, this person doesn’t work in the court system,” he said. Even when the law was on the side of his client, bribes were required to get the necessary ruling, this lawyer said.About half of Ukrainians believe that courts are corrupt, according to a 2008 study conducted by the National Institute for Sociological Studies. But still they fared better in the survey than the Verkhovna Rada, the government, road and regular police and medical institutions.Kateryna Tarasova, head of the Courts Association of Ukraine, whose members include judges, acknowledged the problem. Tarasova blames low salaries of judges. “There is no sufficient financing of the judicial processes. A starting judge makes less than Hr 3,000” monthly, she said.Attempts to reach Vasyl Onopenko, top justice of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, for comment on this story were unsuccessful. In the past, Onopenko has resisted legal changes to make it easier for politicians to appoint and dismiss judges, saying such steps would undermine judicial independence.In the last six months, several judges in Ukraine have allegedly been caught red-handed taking bribes, including Lviv appeals court judge Ihor Zvarych. He is accused of accepting a $100,000 bribe. Other notable cases: Mykola Tyshchuk of Kyiv’s Obolon district court allegedly took a $3,000 bribe while Vyacheslav Lyubashevskiy of Lviv’s appeals court is accused of taking a $20,000 payoff.The number of criminal cases against judges grows yearly. According to the State Security Service, there were 29 criminal cases opened in 2006, 43 cases in 2007 and 52 last year. But few of these get to court because the procedure for lifting the judges’ immunity from prosecution is complicated and involves Verkhovna Rada approval.Also, prosecutors complain that lawyers refuse to testify against judges. “I never met a lawyer who gave testimony against a particular judge,” said Maksym Yakubovskiy, a prosecutor at the General Prosecutor’s Office who investigates such cases. “They want to live and work in this country.”Lawyers who asked for anonymity because they work in the court system described to the Kyiv Post how the bribe-taking works: A chairman of the court is in charge of assigning cases to subordinate judges. Sometimes while passing the papers, the chairman surreptitiously whispers the amount he wants to receive from the interested party as payment for the ‘right’ decision. After the money is passed, it is divided between those involved in the decision making process.Lawyers said most of the bribes are taken and given in property disputes and while determining the term of imprisonment in criminal cases. The sum depends on the level of court, the client’s affluence, and complexity of the case. In a property dispute, for example, bribes can reach 10 percent of the cost of property.“The minimum bribe to a judge in a property dispute is equivalent to the cost of five up-to-date laptops and appeals court decisions will cost twice more,” the lawyer said. He added, however, that in his five or six years of practice he has only come across several honest judges who told him “to hide the money, or I will be arrested for proposing bribes.”Tetyana Montian, a Kyiv lawyer unafraid of voicing her criticisms publicly, has written blogs about bribing judges. Montian said the legal system’s corruption is due to imperfections in legislation regulating property disputes. “A court is a service designed to regulate disputes between parties on property issues. But if positions of parties are not legally regulated, this service won’t work,” she said.Yakubovskiy said vague legislation is not the only reason. He said bribes are accepted because they are offered: “Two-thirds of the time it’s the lawyers who promote corruption in courts.” Yakubovskiy said he knew of several cases in which judges were being pressured into accepting bribes by lawyers who literally stuffed cash into their pockets or briefcases.Yakubovskiy said this happens because for a lawyer it’s easier to pay for the right decision than make a lot of effort to win a case. But Montian said the main problem is that politicians like the status quo and have little interest in changing it, as “our judges are a tool in the hands of political groupings struggling for influence and power,” she said.To become a judge, one has to pass a qualifying exam in front of a committee of 13 members. Two of these are appointed by parliament, two by president, one by the human rights ombudsman, one by the Ministry of Justice, and the rest by an assembly of courts.“They never allow anyone they do not control to become a judge,” one lawyer said.After gaining approval from the committee, the judge is appointed by the president for a term of five years, and confirmed for life in parliament once that term runs out.“Political groupings have divided quotas for appointment of judges; they simply determined that a particular political force will have influence on particular judges,” Montian said.Prosecutor Yakubovskiy said his office has made numerous proposals to the government on how to fight corruption, to no avail.So far, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc has only proposed introducing an automated system of assigning cases to make their distribution more random, a step that may cut down on shopping around for favorable judges.Anatoliy Hrytsenko, Our Ukraine faction lawmaker, drafted a bill implementing life imprisonment for corrupt judges. But there is little optimism in these initiatives, even if they are approved.
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