The HCJ admitted at least
44 dishonest candidates to
the Supreme Court
The HCJ recommended to the President the appointment of at least 44 candidates to the "new" Supreme Court, though it had authority and duty to stop their participation in the competition because of doubts about their integrity.
It should be noted that the list of the High Council of Justice failures described below is not full and comprehensive. The project contains only the most outrageous and notorious examples of the bias of the current composition of the HCJ. The list of failures is regularly updated and expanded.
In 2017-2018, judges to the new Supreme Court were selected at the competition. The aim was to create new higher judicial institution from scratch and to fill it with judges who meet the constitutional requirements of competence and integrity.

At the same time, according to the opinion of the Public Council of Integrity, at least 44 judges did not meet the criteria of integrity and professional ethics. Namely, they had assets that exceeded their legal income, violated requirements of the law on property declaration, were politically dependent, made false statements in declarations of integrity and family relations, made unjust decisions, violated human rights. For instance, the following persons were appointed to the Supreme Court. Olga Stupak lied at the interview about obtaining the state-owned apartment. Oleksander Zolotnikov and Maksym Titov forbade protests and punished activists during the Revolution of Dignity. Sergiy Mohyla, nephew of Sergiy Kivalov, was the member of the scheme of interference in the distribution of cases in the High Economic Court.

According to the law, the HCJ has the power not to recommend the appointment of candidates if there is the smallest doubt about their integrity. However, the HCJ did not take advantage of this and initiated the appointment of 44 dishonest candidates to the Supreme Court. It completely ignored both constitutional requirements of the integrity of judges and negative consequences for public confidence in the judiciary in this case.

The result was that selected dishonest judges significantly undermined the credibility of the judicial system and, in fact, confirmed the failure of judicial reform in terms of updating the highest court in Ukraine.

You can read more about the establishment of the Supreme Court and the role of the High Council of Justice in the report prepared by the DEJURE Foundation and Centre for Political and Legal Reforms.