Oct 7, 2020
The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) reported, “A petition calling on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to help dissolve the notorious District Administrative Court in Kyiv (OACK) has already gained well over 10 thousand signatures, with the numbers in recent days rising rapidly. The President is the only person able to table a draft bill to dissolve a court which has lost any credibility following judicial corruption scandals and an endless stream of highly dubious rulings.
The petition was initiated by journalist Danylo Mokryk on 30 July this year, following the publication by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau [NABU] of yet more compromising conversations held in the office of the head of the court, Pavlo Vovk. The signatories ask the President to submit a draft bill on dissolving the court ‘in view of the total loss of authority by the District Administrative Court in Kyiv, partly as a result of the publication by NABU in July 2019 and July 2020 of conversations within the management regarding the court, which point to deeply entrenched corruption and issuance of wrongful rulings;
In inviting people to sign the petition, Mokryk wrote that each day that OACK continues its existence, is another day in which a mockery is made of the justice system in Ukraine. The petition should force the President to finally take the stand that he should have taken when the first tapes were made public in July 2019. Although in accordance with the law, it is only the President who can initiate dissolution of this court, Zelenskyy has tried to distance himself from the scandal and to claim that he has no influence over the situation.”