Arrested on December 28 in Courchevel (Savoie), the owner of the mining group Ferrexpo, who appeared free under judicial control, is accused by the authorities of his country of having embezzled $ 113 million from his bank, Finance and Credit Bank.

The case was reserved until 30 March.

Mr. Jevago quickly said, at the end of the hearing, how much he believed "in French justice".

Until then, in dark jeans and green polo, he had heard the advocate general Richard Pallain assure before the investigating chamber that there were "no grounds to refuse extradition".

In support of his indictment, the latter notably said that "part of Ukraine" was not in a situation of "conflict of intensity", which "would allow" to return Mr. Jevago to his country.

How to envisage 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 councils. He added: "It is obvious that, while the country is being bombed, justice is not working" and that, under these conditions, "it is not prisoners who are dealt with first".

Nor is there any question, in the eyes of the Advocate General, of retaining the idea that Mr. Jevago would only be a victim of a political settling of scores, which the former MP - from 1998 to 2019 sometimes as an independent, sometimes in the camp of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko - had already said at a first hearing on 5 January.

"For politicians, everything is political! They exclude the possibility that they will be caught with their fingers in the jam jar and that it may be a matter of common law delinquency," Pallain said.

For another counsel of Mr. Jevago, François Zimeray, on the contrary, the ground of common law is "always" the one by which one "disguises the political motive" and one "purifies". He cites in particular as proof 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 MP in his constituency of Poltava (centre-east).

"Off-piste judicial"

The opposition also focused 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 trusted judicially. 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!" said Pallain. Except that Ukraine suspended in April 2022 the European convention on extradition of 1957, because it could no longer guarantee it, explained in substance Etienne Arnaud, another lawyer of Mr. Jevago. How then to "apply a convention which the applicant, Ukraine, cannot apply in return?"

"We cannot respect the law as long as martial law in Ukraine is in force," Finelle said.

Ukrainian businessman Kostiantin Jevago at the Chambery Court of Appeal, March 16, 2023 © JEFF PACHOUD / AFP

Another subject of concern for lawyers is the conditions of possible detention, in sometimes "filthy" prisons, which have been the subject of multiple condemnations by the European Court of Human Rights and NGOs. In this regard, they did not fail to castigate the request of the Prosecutor General's Office to a gendarme of the France 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 "judicial off-track", summarized Mr. Zimeray, in a room where the litigation of mountain accidents is regularly handled. Ukraine at war "calls for all our support, but not all our blindness".

© 2023 AFP