The competitive selection of Ukraine’s first rank-and-file anti-corruption prosecutors earlier this month was hailed by the authorities as a major step towards the rule of law.
Though it is indeed a positive development, problems abound.
The requirement that bans applicants without five years of prosecutorial experience artificially limits the pool of candidates, critics say. Moreover, many applicants were so unprofessional that literally “the best of the worst” had to be chosen in some cases, they argue.
As a result, only 12 of the 318 applicants were chosen on Feb. 6 in a competitive selection process by a special commission of lawmakers, lawyers, activists and law enforcement officers to become rank-and-file anti-corruption prosecutors. That will fill less than half of the 30 vacancies in the newly created institution.
The chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, and his deputies were appointed in late 2015.
The creation of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office is seen as a step towards the establishment of a well-functioning law enforcement system. It is also a requirement set by the EU for switching to a visa-free regime.
The requirement of five-year prosecutorial experience caused headaches for the commission, because the quality of the restricted set of candidates was so low, Daria Kaleniuk, a member of the commission for selecting prosecutors and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, has told Ukrainian news agency UNIAN.
Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze, the leading reformer in the prosecutor’s office, told the Kyiv Post that the law on the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office had to be changed.
The 5-year requirement “meant picking anti-corruption prosecutors only from among current workers in the prosecutorial system, which narrowed the range of candidates. The law has to be changed to create the possibility for experienced lawyers,” Sakvarelidze said.
Boryslav Bereza, a deputy head of the anti-corruption committee in parliament and one of the members of selection commission, also criticized the requirement and lambasted the poor qualifications of applicants.
“Most of them failed the first general skills test. These guys didn’t know the basics of jurisprudence or the criminal code,” Bereza told the Kyiv Post. “And the most terrifying thing is that even after failing to be selected, they’ll still continue to work in the Ukrainian prosecutorial system, back in their jobs at the oblast and district level.”
According to Bereza, the interviews he and his fellow commission members conducted with the experienced prosecutor candidates during the selection process were on occasion amusing, but sometimes alarming.
Writing on Facebook, Bereza revealed that some of the applicants couldn’t explain how they had come by their expensive watches and cars. Another one hadn’t even heard of any famous Ukrainian investigative journalists, like Denys Bigus.
“What a shame! Serhiy Pashyn, one of the three Boryspil prosecutors, who caused a car crash in Kyiv in 2014, wanted to fight corruption,” Bereza wrote. “In November 2014, Pashyn and two of his drunken colleagues almost hit a pregnant woman with a car. After that incident, they were fired from the prosecutor’s office. But Pashyn was reinstated by a court decision, and then thought it would be OK for him to become an anti-corruption prosecutor.”
However, he was optimistic about the 12 candidates who were selected by the commission.
“I hope we’ve chosen people that Ukraine has been waiting for a long time. These 12 are not just fighters of corruption, they’re slayers of fraud,” Bereza said.
He also said his hopes for the success of the special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office had been bolstered by one of the candidates, a veteran of the war in the Donbas.
“Ideally, we want our special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office to become as tough as the Romanian anti-corruption prosecutor’s office – they jailed the brother of the (Romanian) prime minister,” Bereza said. “But it took them 10 years to create such a powerful agency. We don’t have that much time.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected]
