Ukraine Chief Justice, Who Was A Guest at SCOTUS Last Month, Charged With Accepting $1.8 Million Bribe

I happened to be at the Court when Chief Justice Roberts extended a welcome.

When the Supreme Court hosts foreign dignitaries, the Chief Justice will often recognize those guests and extend a welcome on behalf of the Court. (Dignitaries are usually seated in the first row of the public section, right behind the "bar."). I attended oral argument on April 24. At the outset of the session, Chief Justice Roberts announced that the Chief Justice of the Ukraine Supreme Court was in attendance, and welcomed him to the Court. At the time, I was honored by the jurist's presence. It is difficult to fathom how to manage a justice system while your country is at war. (Our country had mixed results with war on the homefront, see Merryman and McCardle). And despite all of the difficulties back home, he still found the time to come to the United States. I hoped his visit would provide some support for the rule of law back in Ukraine. Chief Justice Roberts then moved onto bar admissions, and I filed the Ukrainian Chief Justice's visit in my memory banks.

This evening, the NY Times reported that Chief Justice Vsevolod Knyazev was arrested on charges of accepting a bribe.

The chief of Ukraine's Supreme Court was formally arrested Thursday, as prosecutors indicated in a second day of hearings that a high-level corruption case was expanding to include a wider circle of judges.

Prosecutors also accused a lawyer of acting as an intermediary in paying a bribe to the chief justice, and said that at least three other judges of the court had been found holding thousands of dollars in currency marked by investigators.

The chief justice, Vsevolod Knyazev, was apprehended just after midnight Tuesday by officers of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine, who searched his home and office in simultaneous raids and said they found large sums of cash in U.S. currency.

In videos of court hearings Wednesday and Thursday, posted on the High Anti-Corruption Court's YouTube channel, Mr. Knyazev appeared in the courtroom wearing a bright blue sweater and flanked by his lawyers. The High Council of Justice on Thursday lifted his immunity from prosecution, opening the way for his formal arrest.

Mr. Knyazev has been charged with graft in a public office, and accused of accepting a bribe of $1.8 million to influence a case in favor of a Ukrainian oligarch, Kostyantyn Zhevago. A prosecutor said Mr. Knyazev had sent a message to the lawyer in early May to split the money into at least 14 separate bags, and later sent a message saying he had passed the money to other judges.

The Anti-Corruption Court's prosecutor, Oleksandr Omelchenko, told the court that officers had tracked the payment of the first tranche of the bribe on May 3, and raided Mr. Knyazev's home half an hour after a second tranche was handed over on Monday evening.

The anti-corruption bureau had infiltrated the group making the bribe and marked the notes used in the payment. Officers discovered $1.8 million in cash at Mr. Knyazev's home and office, but the prosecutor said that not all the bribe money, totaling $2.7 million, had been recovered.

Barely a week after Knyazev was greeted so warmly by Chief Justice Roberts, he was soliciting a bribe, to be divided into 14 separate bags.

There is concern that this incident would tarnish the perception of the Ukrainian judiciary:

The case has shocked and dismayed members of Ukraine's judiciary. Two Supreme Court judges in interviews lamented the damage to the reputation of the court and the judiciary. They said they worked through the night and most of Tuesday to prepare a ballot in which 140 of the 142 Supreme Court judges voted to remove Mr. Knyazev from his post. The two judges spoke on condition of anonymity, because of their position as members of the court.

Knyazev also met with Attorney General Garland on his trip.

I'm sure readers will try to make some smarmy connection between Knyazev and the United States Supreme Court's legitimacy. I won't. I am grateful that our federal judges have integrity and honesty, and these sorts of allegations would be unthinkable.

Comments

[Noscitur a sociis]

Don’t take the bait!

[Dan Schiavetta]

Moments like this make me proud to put on record that after 30 years of lawyering I have never been to the Supreme Court and don’t ever expect to get there. Nor has anything I have written ever likely to get within 1000 yards of the place, except maybe as a fluke scrap in the bowels of a recycling truck on its neighborhood rounds that was not properly cleaned out during refurbishing.

None of the Justices would know me from a can of paint. In fact, if I was standing next to a can of paint and one of them said, “Counselor!”, it would be almost certain they would be addressing the can of paint and not me.

Then there’s Josh.

[Lee Moore]

Hold my beer !

I wonder if the Volokheers of Ukrainian origin might advise on whether there has been a mistranslation ? It's probable that what Mr Knyazev received the cash for was not a "bribe", but merely a "book deal." In Ukrainian the two words are almost the same. In English, however....

[Randal]

"Tuition," "rent," and "hospitality" also translate as "bribe" in most languages.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“the 142 Supreme Court judges”

Talk about expanding the Supreme Court!

If the charges are true (and I say "if" because I believe in the presumption of innocence), then with all those Supreme Court justices, there's probably some good ones to replace the corrupt ones.

As to comparisons with the U. S., I'm thinking of an analogy with British journalism as described by Humbert Wolfe:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to.

[Daddyhill]

There's a line with deep, profound semantic consequences in the fabulous British satire "In The Loop". In the chaotic run-up to the Iraq War a more or less hapless British Cabinet minister says that "War Is unforeseeable". He gets ambushed, dressed down, and castigated by the Prime Minister's chief Fixer for saying anything at all that might hint at what the British Government's war policy might actually be at that point. So: unthinkable, unforeseeable, unimaginable, whatever. Allegations of impropriety or corruption in SCOTUS are most definitely thinkable.

[Theendoftheleft]

‘You lay life on a table and cut out all the tumors of injustice. Marvelous. Ah, but cutting out the tumours of injustice, that’s a deep operation’.

Kostyantyn Z.

[santamonica811]

Good for Ukraine, for investigating, and for now prosecuting, apparent corruption in the judiciary. Ukraine has a long history of corruption, so all efforts to root it out are welcome and welcomed.

(Thank God that it wasn't Justice Thomas who extended the personal welcome. The similarities--and the vast differences--are glaringly obvious, so, probably can pass by without making much note of them.)

[Martinned]

Our country had mixed results with war on the homefront, see Merryman and McCardle

He forgot the most famous one. Probably a coincidence.

[Bob from Ohio]

Unlike the Civil War, there was no war on the US "homeland" with Japan.

[Martinned]

But it certainly had "results ... on the homefront".

[Martinned]

Also, Pearl Harbor would like a word.

[apedad]

Although Hawaii was not a state when Pearl Harbor happened so not sure if we can really consider it part of the US homeland back then.

It became a territory in 1900, was under martial law from Dec. 7, 1941 to Oct. 1944, and became a state in Aug. 1959.

[Absaroka]

Ditto for the Aleutians.

But Japan did attack California, plus the balloon bombs (one of which killed six civilians in Oregon).

[Frank Drackman]

Hmm, sounds like "Bob from Ohio" was really ed-jew-ma-cated in O-High-O, next he'll be telling us it was the Clemson player who punched Woody Hayes fist with his helmet.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

You might also want to read about the history of U-Boat attacks on the US east coast in the first six months of 1942. They sunk shipping well within US waters, including laying mines inside Chesapeake Bay.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I see that Bob did specify Japan in his comment. "Don't interrupt him, he's on a roll."

[Bob from Ohio]

He made a comment about Koramatsu so Japan is the correct war theater to discuss.

[Absaroka]

Sure, the 'Happy Time'. You could see the ships burning from shore. I didn't mention it because it was at sea, even if close ashore. OTOH, the Germans did invade, for some definitions of invade.

(several agents were landed by U-boat to conduct sabotage. Two of them went to the FBI, and the rest were rounded up)

[Martinned]

If it was an incorporated territory (and I think it was), it was part of the homeland.

[Bob from Ohio]

Why?

Was the British "homeland" involved during the Falklands War?

[Longtobefree]

No mention if the pile of US cash had a note pinned to it saying "for the big guy"?

[CommentMonkey]

I hope he uses some of the money to buy a better-fitting suit.

[Frank Drackman]

I'm shocked! Shocked! to find corruption going on in the You-Crane!
Zelensky keeps flying everywhere like a friggin 70's Rock Star don't be surprised when he gets the Admiral Yamamoto treatment.

Frank

[Anon]

I'm inclined to remember times when I myself have become complacent in my own perceived righteousness.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Prof. Blackman has concluded this person is guilty.

Is he equally persuaded by all arrests and accusations?

His effort to insulate Clarence (and Ginni) Thomas is especially weak.

[Theendoftheleft]

Ho hum. Meanwhile, your President, his son, your 2016 failed presidential candidate, your FBI, the former CIA Director, and the former AG are all to be insulated by your corporate press from any accountability for their criminality, election tampering, and treason.

What do you nevertheless reckon the global views of the Durham report are and shall be? Do you think our leaders will have more or less respect for Biden and the USA?

Carry on, clinger... till your betters tar and feather you, that is.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Durham report? Clingers will cling to it (as if it were QAnon in a goofy red hat and Confederate flag shirt) but better Americans recognize it as a self-serving failure.

[Theendoftheleft]

You’re an established clinger, AIDS…

Do you also understand that most Westerners, and indeed, the literal members of the globe, irrespective of their political affiliations, KNOW that democracy dies in the WaPo and NYT? As far as the world is concerned, those American papers have discredited themselves as propaganda rags (enforcing hegemonic discourses, as my leftist friends would say).

More importantly, choose reason, AIDS. Rationalisations to obfuscate from your government’s gangsterism and criminality can only serve as a salve for so long. (Do you even read what the real left says about the Durham report, or are you too afraid to face reality, as in all other areas, eg your values, politics, identity, etc?)

[Darwinnie]

Unthinkable here? Bwahhaaahhhaaa! Give me a fucking break.

[The Turtle Dove]

Adversity and difficult conditions of life tend to make all things more plain, including corruption. Prosperity allows things to be a bit more Baroque.

Mr. D.