An anti-corruption court slapped Mykola Chaus - who was hiding in Moldova, got kidnapped there, and hauled back to Ukraine - with a ten-year sentence.

A former Ukrainian magistrate who had stashed 150,000 US dollars from bribes in pickle jars and fled from justice to neighboring Moldova, where he demanded political asylum, has ended up locked for ten years in a prison at home.

Chaus, a former judge at the Dnipro District Court of Kyiv, was convicted last week under bribery charges while his properties have been confiscated by the state, Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court said in a release. 

Surprisingly, he has not been banned from the Ukrainian judiciary system for good – his license to get employed as a magistrate was lifted for only three years upon servicing the prison term.

Chaus made headlines in Ukrainian press due to 2016 footage of large amounts of US cash hidden in pickle jars at his luxury home in Kyiv and inside his car, which were searched by the domestic anti-corruption agency NABU. Officers discovered at least 150,000 dollars which the judge claimed to be borrowed money. The parliament, Verkhovna Rada, swiftly stripped the magistrate off immunity and suspended him from office to clear the way for a trial, the agency said in a statement. 

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Until then, the magistrate had earned a reputation of biased judge due to favorable rulings for business and political allies of former president Petro Poroshenko.

The cash in pickle jars was extorted from a married couple in return for a milder sentence on the wife’s mother, who was charged with drug trafficking.

Hiding in Moldova

Chaus, who pleaded not guilty and claimed that the case was politically motivated, didn’t wait for the trial and using his connections in Moldova escaped from provisional arrest. He established in the neighboring country’s capital Chisinau, moving between different apartments to confuse his pursuers. The Moldovan authorities meanwhile could not extradite the fugitive magistrate due to his formal application for political asylum and informal help from corrupt local politicians.

Former Ukrainian magistrate Mykola Chaus under house arrest. Credit: RISE.md 

RISE Moldova, an investigative outlet in Chisinau, published a thrilling story about the participation of two Moldovan nationals associated with the now fugitive oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, the country’s de factor ruler at that time, in Chaus’ extraction from Ukraine aboard a private business jet. 

In spring 2021, Moldova finally denied the asylum status and ordered the police to apprehend the ex-magistrate. 

But before it happened, in April 2021, a group of men kidnapped Mykola Chaus in Chisinau and hauled him back to Ukraine. This event – which the media reported as an undercover operation of Ukrainian security services – strained the ties between the two countries, though the Ukrainian side denied any links with the kidnappers. 

The kidnappers were even identified in a journalist investigation. 

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But Moldovan prosecutors nonetheless accused Ukrainian officials of involvement in the Chaus kidnapping and filed a legal case.

There was no news about the magistrate for months after this event. It was only in late July 2021 when Chaus unexpectedly appeared in public and surrendered to the SBU, Ukraine’s security agency, in a village in the Vinnitsa region.

The conviction is not final and Mykola Chaus has 30 days to file an appeal.