The High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) hopes to elect 25 judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) and the HACC Appeal Chamber by the end of this year, assures that the competition is open and that candidates for judges will be thoroughly checked for their possible connections with the aggressor state.

In an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, a member of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, judge of the High Anti-Corruption Court Oleh Koliush said that the submission of documents from candidates for the positions of judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court and the HACC Appeal Chamber will end on March 30 of this year.

According to him, at the moment, 143 applications from candidates have been submitted, of which 89 are to the HACC as the first instance and 54 to the HACC Appeal Chamber.

"According to preliminary analysis, 75 candidates are judges, 44 are lawyers, 13 are scientists, 11 are with mixed experience. These are still approximate data. As for the gender distribution, there are 51 women and 92 men among the candidates," Koliush clarified.

A member of the HQCJ said that during the competition a qualification assessment will be carried out, and candidates will also complete a practical task on the specialization of the court.

"Then, candidates who have scored enough points undergo a special check. The commission sends documents to a number of government agencies, which give us answers regarding certain circumstances of the candidate's life and compliance with the criteria specified by law," the member of the High Qualification Commission of Judges said.

Another stage of the competition, Koliush clarified, is researching the dossier and conducting interviews.

He drew attention to the peculiarity of the competition - the participation in it of the Public Council of International Experts, consisting of six members. According to the member of the HQCJ, the composition of this Council is currently being formed.

Answering the question about checking judicial candidates for possible connections with the aggressor state, Koliush assured that the HQCJ takes a principled position on this issue. "Identification of information about the presence of ties with the aggressor state is clearly grounds for recognizing the judge as unsuitable for the position held and dishonest, and the candidate will be denied a recommendation for the position of judge," he said.

In this context, the member of the HQCJ said: "We will definitely assess the possible connections (of candidates for HACC judges) with the Russian Federation. Members of the HQCJ, like every Ukrainian, have a categorically negative attitude towards the presence of such data."

He also emphasized that the competition will be open and transparent, the High Qualification Commission of Judges will inform the public in detail about its conduct in order to prevent any claims of non-transparency of the Commission's work.

"We plan to complete the competition by the end of this year. I hope that objective circumstances will not interfere with this, and we will get new judges of the HACC and the HACC Appeal Chamber," Koliush concluded.