There were high hopes in Ukraine in the days after the EuroMaidan Revolution that the cronies of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, suspected of looting billions of dollars from the country, would face justice.
More than two years later, those hopes have faded: Not a single member of the Yanukovych team has been prosecuted. They are walking around freely and arrogantly, in Ukraine or in exile in Russia, despite evidence against them.
Almost none of the pilfered money has been returned, leading some to suspect that President Petro Poroshenko made a deal with the vanquished regime, much the same way that people still suspect that ex-President Viktor Yushchenko blocked investigations into the alleged financial crimes and murders implicating his predecessor, Leonid Kuchma.
While the United States and European Union slapped sanctions on many corrupt former Ukrainian officials, the targets are trying to get those measures lifted as fast as their highly paid lawyers can.
Another one free
In the latest slap against the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to live in a normal rule-of-law country, a court in Kyiv on April 1 cancelled a warrant for the arrest of Yuriy Ivaniushchenko, an ex-lawmaker and close ally of Yanukovych, suspected of stealing $80 million in state funds. Earlier, it also quietly closed the criminal case against him.
Ivaniushchenko was then taken off the Interpol wanted list on April 19.
After the media outcry, the Prosecutor General’s Office said that the case was reopened on June 9.
The lifting of charges means that Ivaniushchenko can apply to be removed from the European Union sanctions list, which would allow him to recover frozen assets. He is currently one of 16 former high-level Ukrainian officials who remain sanctioned by the EU on suspicion of embezzlement and for human rights violations.
According to the records of the Court of Justice of the European Union, Ivaniushchenko applied to the EU Council to take him off its sanctions list more than a year ago. His case’s status is “in progress.”
Virginie Battu-Henriksson, the press officer of the EU Council, said that she could not comment on individual cases, but confirmed that if “substantial new evidence is presented, the council shall review the decision to list a person.”
If Ivaniushchenko manages to get off the EU’s sanctions list, he won’t be the first former official removed.
Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes kisses Raisa Bohatyriova, then the health minister, at the meeting of the Council of the Regions in Kyiv on Dec. 26, 2013. (UNIAN)
The unpunished
Activists have long been warning that, unless Ukraine’s prosecutors take investigations of former top officials seriously, Ukraine might never see any of them prosecuted or get back any of the money they allegedly stole and that for now is frozen on their accounts in EU and U.S. banks.
There is a slight hope that Ukraine’s budget might still get back some of the $20 billion that Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko estimated has been frozen, of which $1.5 billion is in Ukrainian banks. The Verkhovna Rada will soon consider a bill on misappropriated assets confiscation developed by the Justice Ministry. A similar bill passed in the first reading in March, but it was removed because of EU objections.
The European Council in spring 2014 froze the funds of 22 members of the Yanukovych regime and banned them from entry into and transit within the EU.
But only 16 names remain on the list now, and 11 of them are challengng the council’s decisions.
Yanukovych has launched a second attempt to have his name removed from the EU’s sanctions list – the first attempt ended in failure on July 16, 2015, when the EU’s General Court dismissed his court action as “manifestly inadmissible.” His second appeal is listed as “in process.”
According to the EU’s official journal, travel bans and assets freezes were lifted on four former Ukrainian officials in March 2015. They were: Oleksiy Azarov, the son of ex-prime minister Mykola Azarov (who remains on the list), former Yanukovych advisers Andriy Portnov and Ihor Kalinin, and the former head of Ukraine’s SBU security service, Oleksandr Yakymenko.
Andriy Portnov, then adviser for ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, stands in the Ukrainian parliament in Kyiv on Nov. 7, 2013. In less than four months, both Portnov and Yanukovych fled Ukraine, escaping the EuroMaidan Revolution. (UNIAN)
Former Ukrainian Health Minister Raisa Bohatyriova was taken off the list in March 2016 after the Ukrainian government said she had repaid government funds that had been allegedly misappropriated, according to media reports.
Ukraine’s multimillionaire Serhiy Klyuyev, a lawmaker and Yanukovych ally, is still on the EU sanctions list, as well as his older brother Andriy, Yanukovych’s last chief of staff. Being wanted in Ukraine on suspicion of large-scale fraud, and abuse of power, Serhiy Klyuyev managed to vanish from the country the same day that parliament stripped him of his legal immunity from criminal prosecution last summer.
Ignoring evidence against Klyuyev, parliament didn’t vote to arrest him, allowing him to walk free. The next day, he fled.
Only after Klyuyev was gone for more than half a year, Ukraine’s parliament finally stripped him of the immunity.
Mykola Zlochevsky, an ex-ecology minister under Yanukovych and a majority shareholder in Burisma Holdings, a gas producer, is wanted by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry on suspicion of illicit enrichment and abuse of office. According to the Interior Ministry’s website, he disappeared on Jan. 16, 2015. In about a week, Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court’s ruling appeared in the court registry – Zlochevsky’s assets were unfrozen. Those included two garden houses, two land plots, 922- and 300 square-meter homes and a Rolls-Royce Phantom.
The list of the ex-top officials who fled Ukraine unpunished goes on and on.
Oleksiy Azarov, then a lawmaker, stands in the Ukrainian parliament on Dec. 13, 2014. (UNIAN)
Inactive prosecutors
In addition to launching legal actions, former Ukrainian officials are being removed from the list, which is regularly reviewed by the EU, simply due to inaction of Ukrainian prosecutors.
Ivaniushchenko’s removal from the Interpol wanted list is a prime example.
The Prosecutor General’s Office opened an investigation and issued an arrest warrant for Ivaniushchenko in January 2015 on suspicion of embezzlement. Ivaniushchenko had been suspected of a theft of $75.2 million and of embezzling Hr 170 million ($6.8 million) – the sum that Ukraine received from selling quotas for greenhouse-gas emissions to Japan in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol. Ivaniushchenko has denied involvement.
However, Solomyanskiy District Court in Kyiv in January ordered prosecutors to close the investigation against Ivaniushchenko, citing the inactivity of investigators. Prosecutors appealed but lost.
Nevertheless, on June 7, the Prosecutor General’s Office said that it was still investigating Ivaniushchenko, and two days later – that the Specialized Higher Court of Ukraine ruled to reopen the case.
Head of Anti-Corruption Action Center Vitaliy Shabunin said Ivaniushchenko’s case was “the most obvious one” among former Yanukovych allies.
“One needed to try really hard to kill this case,” Shabunin said. “This is connivance.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office attempted to appeal against the ruling on the Ivaniushchenko case. However, the Kyiv Court of Appeals on April 6 refused.
Ukrainian lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko, who broke the news of Ivaniushchenko’s removal from Interpol’s wanted list at a press conference on June 7, condemned the Ukrainian judges who canceled the arrest warrant, and said that such misconduct couldn’t take place without the approval of Poroshenko.
“There are numerous allies among the current authorities who are ready to take part in a bandits’ plot, in exchange for financial rewards,” Leshchenko said.
