Drew Sullivan, the co-founder and managing editor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), commented on the trial against Slidstvo.Info. He believes that the plaintiff’s actions constitute fundamental corruption, and that the court case is “an attack on independent and high-quality Ukrainian media”.
Serhiy Semeniuk, a subject of the joint investigation by Slidstvo.Info and the OSSRP, a business partner and friend of the Russian businessman, sued the journalists for their investigation into cleaning companies from the Russian businessman’s orbit that have been cleaning Ukrainian strategic facilities for many years. However, Slidstvo.Info found out that Semeniuk’s lawyers tried to bypass the electronic auto-distribution system so that the case would be handled by a judge they found “convenient”. Another defendant also appeared in the case, coincidentally, this man is registered in the same district of Dnipro as the Zhovtnevyi District Court, where Semeniuk wants to sue the journalists.
The businessman’s actions were condemned by Drew Sullivan, the co-founder and managing editor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Research Centre (OCCRP).
“This is a really disturbing case for a couple of reasons. It sounds like this particular person manipulated the system, and they were allowed to manipulate the system to eventually get a judge and the court that they desired. The whole point of having a random selection of judges is to exactly prevent this. But if you allow people to continuously file lawsuits until they get the judge they want, then that’s a ridiculous manipulation of the system. And if they allow to do that, that’s fundamentally corruption”, Drew Sullivan said.
The OCCRP co-founder says that this practice of manipulating the selection of judges also occurs in other countries, but this case is very unfavourable for Ukraine’s image.
“In different parts of the world there have been manipulations of (judicial — ed.) system. Ukraine has to demonstrate it’s not corrupt if it wants to continue getting Western dollars. And this is the clear case where they are allowing the media to be attacked in the strongest possible way to help those who try to silence the media. It is simply not fair, and it’s not a good look for Ukraine at this time”, comments Drew Sullivan.
According to Sullivan, the court should assign another judge who is not biassed to the case.
“I think the case should be reassigned. It should be publicly made, clear to everybody, and then a new judge should be reassigned. Every time the court sees this kind of manipulation, they can’t let that happen,” says Drew Sullivan.
The peculiarity of this case, according to Drew, is that there is a Russian trace in this story, which is especially outrageous in times of war.
“I think this is the case when someone was dealing with Russians, there was definitely a Russian component in this, and Ukraine is at war with Russia. And to allow them to manipulate the court system to hurt Ukrainian media is an outrageous result of this. And you know, I think they clearly chose Ukraine to do this because the judicial system was not strong, so it could be manipulated. Now Ukraine is in a situation where it has to demonstrate to the world that the billions of dollars that they are pouring into it are not going to be used by people who have connections to the very enemy that Ukraine is fighting! It’s outrageous,” Drew said.
Slidstvo.Info is part of the international network of investigative journalists, OCCRP, which is co-owned by Drew Sullivan. As a contributing editor to OCCRP, Drew believes this is an attack on independent, quality media.
“We have worked with Slidstvo.Info for over a decade. It is excellent journalism. We support them, we trust their reporting, we trust their fact-checking, and their editing”, concludes Drew.
Earlier, Slidstvo.Info found that cleaning companies from the orbit of a Russian businessman have been cleaning Ukrainian strategic facilities, such as Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukrenergo, the tax office, etc. for many years in a row. The companies that clean these facilities belong to the orbit of Eduard Apsit, a Russian businessman of Belarusian origin. His business partner and close friend, Ukrainian Serhiy Semeniuk, owns companies from the notional Chysto group in Ukraine.
According to colleagues from the OCCRP, in Russia, cleaning companies associated with the Apsit family cleaned the Kremlin Palace.
In addition, the journalists found a company of the Chysto group that operated in the occupied Crimea and cleaned the barracks of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Ministry of Defence.
After the publication of this investigation, Serhii Semeniuk filed a lawsuit against the editorial board of Slidstvo.Info and the author of the story, Yanina Kornienko, for the protection of his honour, dignity and business reputation. At the same time, his lawyers tried to manipulate the procedure of electronic distribution of judges, which automatically determines who will handle the case. To do this, the lawyer filed an application with the court several times and withdrew it until the system issued the judge they needed. A second defendant, in addition to Slidstvo.Info, was also added to the case, Vladyslav Hryndak. The lawyers sued the man for reposting the Slidstvo.Info investigation on his Instagram page. Hryndak has only 30 followers and only two posts on his page. It is significant that Semeniuk’s lawyers copied his post reposting the investigation 17 seconds after it was published.
The video has English subtitles.
