On January 25, the Verkhovna Rada adopted draft law No.5490 on liability for contempt of court in the second reading and in general. 281 in favor.
Why is it important?
TI Ukraine lawyers have repeatedly witnessed how some defense lawyers and persons involved disrupted important court hearings of the High Anti-Corruption Court. Proceedings of cases were often repeatedly postponed, or entire cases were blocked for months because of this.
Until today, the HACC had no right to bring to administrative liability for the disrespectful behavior of participants in the proceedings. For the HACC, this problem has been acute because it is a matter of ensuring effective work, namely, maintaining procedural discipline and proper behavior of all parties to the proceedings.
Representatives of the public have repeatedly come to the conclusion that the effectiveness of the HACC’s work depends not only on the quality, training, and integrity of judges, but also on the effective and procedurally appropriate behavior of the defense and prosecution parties. Unfortunately, repeated cases of inappropriate behavior of certain representatives of the defense in the HACC significantly affect the overall effectiveness of legal proceedings in this court. TI Ukraine noted this in its study of the HACC’s work.
Therefore, granting the HACC the right to bring to administrative liability for contempt of court is an increase in the efficiency and capacity of anti-corruption proceedings.
With the adoption of draft law No. 5490, the HACC will become more effective, will be able to focus on sentencing and making important court decisions, and not waste time on resolving issues that are not directly related to legal proceedings.
You can get acquainted with our legal analysis of the draft law here: http://bitly.ws/obhm.
During the monitoring of the Anti-Corruption Court, we repeatedly recorded inappropriate behavior of representatives of the defense, which, in turn, significantly affected the overall efficiency of legal proceedings and the number of verdicts. Therefore, the proper work of the HACC depends not only on virtuous judges, but also on the proper behavior of the defense and prosecution parties.
