KIEV, UKRAINE — If you think American politics can get ugly, take a look at the way the game is played in Ukraine.Ukraine’s deputy general prosecutor says he has “sex tapes” that implicate several of the country’s top judges and could end their careers. The tapes were acquired from video cameras hidden in high-ranking judges’ offices, ostensibly as part of an investigation into corruption in the judiciary.
“It’s not normal for a chief judge to arrange orgies in his own office during working hours,” Deputy General Prosecutor Renat Kuzmin told Kommersant, a Ukraine business daily.
Kuzmin is employed by the General Prosecutor’s Office, which is loyal to Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko. On the other side of a long-running and particularly contentious political rivalry is Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, whose loyalists include most of those who sit on the bench.
It’s not every day the courts and prosecutors are at each other’s throats, but such is life in the former Soviet Socialist Republic.
Although the sex tapes announcement was only the latest in a series of corruption allegations leveled by each side against the other, it has generated the biggest scandal to date. So far only two judges — Igor Zvarich, formerly the chief judge of the Lvov City Court of Appeal, and Ukraine’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Vasily Onopenko — have been outed. Zvarich is sought on charges that he sexually abused subordinates and accepted bribes. Onopenko stands accused of abusing his power to further Timoshenko’s political goals. Other judges are expected to appear on the prosecutor’s wanted list soon.
Kuzmin has called for all judges to be stripped of prosecutorial immunity.
The judges, as might be expected, call the prosecutor’s allegations politically motivated.
