Ukraine is desperately short of judges, and is kick-starting a long-delayed nationwide hiring spree to fill more than 2,000 vacancies and vet around as many sitting judges for potential malfeasance.
Court cases have piled up across Ukraine as a result.
The regional appeals court in northeastern Ukraine's Sumy has only four judges left out of a full staff of 35.
Some 2,000 sitting judges also require integrity checks, part of the judicial house-cleaning launched, but never finished, after Maidan.
Oleksandr Tupytskyi, now living in Vienna according to Ukrainian media reports, has denied wrongdoing and said the cases against him are political.
Persons:
Lady Justice, Thomas Peter Acquire, Vira Levko, Levko, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ruslan Sydorovych, it's, Sydorovych, Halyna Chyzhyk, shouldn't, Mykhailo Zhernakov, Oleksandr Tupytskyi, Zhernakov, I've, Dan Peleschuk, Anna Dabrowska, Mike Collett, White, Gareth Jones
Organizations:
REUTERS, Reuters, European Union, European Commission, Kyiv, EU, DEJURE Foundation, Constitutional, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Thomson
Locations:
Pecherskyi, Kyiv City, Kyiv, Ukraine, KYIV, Ukrainian, Dniprovskyi, Russia, Ukraine's Sumy, Maidan, Halyna, Vienna