Ukrainian businessman and former MP Kostiantin Jevago, accused of embezzlement, leaves the Chambéry Court of Appeal on March 16, 2023 (AFP/JEFF PACHOUD)
“Off-track judicial” for his lawyers, “fundamental” guarantees of a fair trial united for the prosecution: the extradition of the wealthy Ukrainian businessman and former deputy Kostiantin Jevago gave rise to two totally divergent analyzes Thursday before the Chambery Court of Appeal.
Arrested on December 28 in Courchevel (Savoie), the owner of the mining group Ferrexpo, who appeared free under judicial supervision, is accused by the authorities of his country of having embezzled 113 million dollars from his bank, Finance and Credit Bank.
The case was adjourned to March 30.
Mr. Jevago quickly said, at the end of the hearing, how much he believed “in French justice”.
Until then, in dark jeans and a green polo shirt, he had heard Advocate General Richard Pallain assure the investigating chamber that there were “no grounds for refusing extradition”.
In support of his indictment, the latter notably affirmed that a “part of Ukraine” was not in a situation of “conflict of intensity”, which “would” allow Mr. Jevago to be sent back to his country. .
How to consider such a hypothesis when the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on its own website, says that “the whole country is at war”, retorted Jessica Finelle, one of Mr. Jevago’s three advisers. And to add: “It is obvious that, while the country is bombarded, justice does not work” and that, in these conditions, “it is not the prisoners that we take care of first”.
Nor is there any question, in the eyes of the Advocate General, of accepting the idea that Mr Jevago would only be the victim of a settling of political scores, which the former deputy – from 1998 to 2019 sometimes as independent, sometimes in the camp of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko – had already affirmed during a first hearing on January 5.
“For politicians, everything is political! They exclude the possibility that they are caught with their fingers in the jam jar and that it could be a question of common law delinquency”, launched Mr. Pallain .
For another adviser from Mr. Jevago, François Zimeray, on the contrary, the reason for common law is “always” the one by which one “makes up the political reason” and one “purifies”. He particularly wants proof of this in the judicial “calendar”: the announcement of the opening of proceedings against his client came on the same day as his candidacy for a new mandate as deputy in his constituency of Poltava (center-east ).
– “Off-track judicial” –
The opposition has also crystallized on the judicial guarantees that Ukraine would provide on the fairness of the trial or the conditions of detention.
“We will tell you that Ukraine is a state that cannot be attacked on the judicial level, which cannot be trusted. But it is always risky to condemn a state in general. I would remind you that Ukraine is still a member of the European Convention on Human Rights!” argued Mr. Pallain. Except that Ukraine suspended the 1957 European Convention on Extradition in April 2022, because it could no longer guarantee it, explained in substance Etienne Arnaud, another lawyer for Mr. Jevago. How then “to apply a convention which the applicant, Ukraine, cannot apply in return?”.
Ukrainian businessman Kostiantin Jevago at the Chambéry Court of Appeal, March 16, 2023 (AFP / JEFF PACHOUD)
“We cannot respect the law as long as martial law in Ukraine is in force”, also hammered Me Finelle.
Another subject of concern for the lawyers: the conditions of a possible detention, in sometimes “filthy” prisons, which have been the subject of multiple condemnations by the European Court of Human Rights and NGOs. On this subject, they did not fail to castigate the request of the public prosecutor’s office to a gendarme from the French embassy in Kiev on the state of prisons in Ukraine, which, according to them, would have provided positive answers on the guarantees .
To deliver Mr. Jevago is therefore to take the risk of a “legal off-track”, summarized Mr. Zimeray, in a room where litigation on mountain accidents is regularly dealt with. Ukraine at war “calls for all our support, but not all our blindness”.
© 2023 AFP
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