Critics have dismissed President Petro Poroshenko’s rationale for not firing Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin as lacking credibility.
At a Jan.
14 news conference, Poroshenko did not dispute the argument that Shokin had
failed to take any high-profile criminal cases to court.
The
president argued, however, that it did not make sense to fire Shokin, as
prosecutors would become much less powerful after anti-corruption functions are
transferred to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, and investigative ones are
given over to the yet-to-be-created State Investigation Bureau.
But critics
say Poroshenko’s argument was flawed because the prosecutor general will still
have a lot of power. They argue that the president is reluctant to fire Shokin
because he seeks to use him as a political tool.
“For
Poroshenko, the notion of a neutral or politically independent prosecutor
doesn’t exist,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told the Kyiv
Post. “He needs a loyal man in the prosecutor general’s position.”
There are
several reasons why Shokin’s position will remain important:
Oversight
of cases
Shokin will
still have procedural oversight over all criminal cases handled by the State
Investigation Bureau, Interior Ministry, Security Service of Ukraine, State
Fiscal Service and other agencies. That means none of those agencies will be
able to do anything without the prosecutor general’s knowledge or approval.
“The
prosecutor general will be ultimately responsible for any criminal case in
Ukraine,” Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko said on the Shuster Live
television show on Jan. 15.
The only
exception is the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which is procedurally
independent from the prosecutor general.
Moreover, the
State Investigation Bureau will be created no earlier than in half a year.
Influence
over agencies
The
prosecutor general will retain some influence even over the National
Anti-Corruption Bureau. Nazar Kholodnytsky, the incumbent anti-corruption prosecutor,
is technically a deputy of Shokin, and it has yet to be seen whether he is
independent from him.
In the case
of Kholodnytsky stepping down, the prosecutor general will appoint his
representatives to the commission that will choose his successor and will get
to choose from the candidates nominated by the commission.
Petty
corruption cases
The
National Anti-Corruption Bureau will be in charge of corruption cases against
top officials and those involving sums of more than Hr 650,000, but the
Prosecutor General’s Office will still handle smaller graft cases.
Two-year
lag
The
Prosecutor General’s Office will keep investigating for two more years all
corruption cases that it has opened. That means that Shokin will still
supervise high-profile cases against disgraced former President Viktor
Yanukovych and his allies, which critics say he has derailed and sabotaged.
Vitaly
Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, said
that the Prosecutor General’s Office had effectively “killed” those
investigations.
“It’s
impossible to investigate them now,” he said by phone. “They’ve been killing
evidence for two years.”
Shokin has
denied the accusations.
Violent
crimes
The
Prosecutor General’s Office will also remain in charge of investigating cases
of murder, theft, kidnapping, fraud and other transgressions. Critics say
prosecutors can utilize those powers to persecute the government’s political
opponents or extort money from businesses.
Controls
reform
Finally,
Shokin will still be in charge of the next stages of prosecutorial reform and
will be able to derail them, critics argue.
They say
that the first stage of prosecutorial reform, which envisaged recruiting top
local prosecutors in a transparent hiring process last year, failed.
As many as
87 percent of top local prosecutors chosen during the hiring process turned out
to be incumbent top prosecutors and their deputies, and not a single person
from outside the prosecutorial system was hired.
