Anti-Corruption Court

On December 23, 2017, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko submitted a bill on the Anti-Corruption Court to the Verkhovna Rada. The adoption of this law is one of the requirements of the International Monetary Fund.

The Anti-Corruption Court will consider cases involving top corrupt officials. The main requirements of the Venice Commission were the independence of the court and a new principle for selecting judges.

But experts are already criticising the bill. They name three things that will make the long-awaited court incapable. First – the procedure for selecting judges is not transparent (international experts are assigned only an advisory role, not a decisive one). Second – it will not start working any time soon, only after the presidential elections. And third – it will be swamped with cases from the National Police, the SBU and the Tax Service.