Ukraine’s distrusted and discredited Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who has denied all of the many accusations of corruption and obstruction of investigations against him, is back with a vengeance.
Shokin, on the job for more than a year, resigned on Feb. 16 and went on vacation after President Petro Poroshenko asked him to step down amid intense public pressure.
But on March 16 he returned from vacation. His spokesman Vladyslav Kutsenko told at a news conference that Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, did not have enough votes to fire him. Kutsenko could not be reached for comment on March 17.
Iryna Suslova, a lawmaker from the Samopomich Party, also said parliament did not have enough votes to fire Shokin.
Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Groysman said on March 17 that a vote for Shokin’s dismissal is scheduled for March 29.
Meanwhile, President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc is considering replacing Shokin with yet another loyal protégé of the president.
Shokin’s last-ditch attempt to keep his job comes amid a standoff between Shokin’s old guard, including his first deputy Yury Sevruk, and reformist Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze.
Parliament’s procrastination with Shokin’s resignation mirrors its inability to find a replacement for Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk for weeks. A no-confidence vote for his Cabinet narrowly failed on Feb. 16 after Poroshenko Bloc lawmakers and others aligned with Ukraine’s oligarchs kept him in power.
But Yatsenyuk is surviving not because of support for him, but because a majority of parliament cannot agree on his successor.
Horse-trading continues
“As soon as horse-trading over the prime minister continues, the issue of a new prosecutor general will not be considered separately,” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, told the Kyiv Post.
He said, however, that he could not imagine Shokin staying as prosecutor general for more than three weeks since it would further dent Poroshenko’s image.
“It looks silly and erodes Poroshenko’s influence and trust in him,” he said. “This is unexplainable buffoonery. Normal politicians don’t do that.”
Olena Sotnyk, a lawmaker from the Samopomich Party, said by phone that she expected the Verkhovna Rada to drag its feet on replacing Shokin as long as possible.
Yatsenyuk “needs to keep his prime ministerial seat as long as possible, and for the president, the longer Shokin stays the better,” she said.
Yury Lutsenko, head of the Poroshenko Bloc in parliament, and the leadership of Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party called for removing Shokin earlier this week.
However, lawmakers from the Poroshenko Bloc – which has 136 out of 422 members – are already backtracking on their earlier plans to fire Shokin and saying that circumstances have changed and that he is not that bad, Sotnyk added.
Moreover, two lawmakers from the People’s Front led by Yatsenyuk abstained during a vote on approving Shokin’s resignation at the Verkhovna Rada’s law enforcement committee on March 16. A majority of the committee’s members voted for dismissing Shokin.
Sotnyk also said that, according to her sources, Shokin’s vacation had been fake, and he had gone to work almost every day.
Pressure on reformers
Shokin’s comeback re-ignited a conflict between the leadership of the prosecutor’s office and Sakvarelidze.
In what critics see as an attempt to pressure Sakvarelidze, Kutsenko said on March 16 that the Prosecutor General’s Office will investigate alleged theft of U.S. grants worth $2.2 million allocated for prosecutorial reform. Sakvarelidze is in charge of the reform that envisages a competitive hiring process for prosecutors and laying off incompetent and corrupt officials.
Verkhovna Rada members have complained that the funds had not been transferred to the government’s accounts, Kutsenko said.
Kutsenko’s allegations were denied by Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He said the funds were not intended to go to the Ukrainian government.
“The U.S. doesn’t provide direct budget support to the Prosecutor General’s Office or any Ukrainian government institution or agency; funds go to credible international partner organizations,” Pyatt tweeted on March 16. “For example, the U.S. gave $200,000 to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to develop an objective test for the prosecutorial service.”
Another $2 million for prosecutorial reform was allocated for the International Development and Law Organization, he added.
“As I’ve stated publicly before, we want to see the Prosecutor General’s Office leading the fight against corruption instead of openly and aggressively undermining reform,” Pyatt argued.
Last month Sakvarelidze said that Shokin and Sevruk were taking revenge on reformist investigators who are in charge of corruption cases against prosecutors.
He said that Shokin and Sevruk had opened criminal cases against these investigators to pressure them and had effectively put them out of work.
Shabunin and Sotnyk said Kutsenko’s accusations were an effort to discredit and intimidate Sakvarelidze.
“In terms of getting support from the West, it’s suicide,” Shabunin said. “It’s a slap in the U.S. ambassador’s face.”
Poroshenko’s loyalists
Amid the internal conflict at the prosecutor’s office, lawmakers are considering possible replacements for Shokin.
Poroshenko loyalists seemed to be front-runners in the race for the job.
The Poroshenko Bloc has started collecting signatures for appointing Lutsenko, head of the bloc’s faction in parliament, as prosecutor general.
Another candidate reportedly being discussed by the bloc is Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Stolyarchuk, who is responsible for investigations at the prosecutor’s office.
Critics accuse Stolyarchuk, a Shokin ally, of blocking all high-profile corruption investigations.
People’s prosecutor
EuroOptimists, a pro-European group of reformist lawmakers, on March 16 suggested another candidate – Serhiy Horbatiuk, head of the department for trials in absentia at the prosecutor’s office. They said Horbatiuk should be nominated along with other candidates and submitted for public discussion.
Previously a proposal to nominate Horbatiuk was made by lawyers for murdered EuroMaidan demonstrators. Horbatiuk is in charge of investigations into the murders of over 100 protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution that ultimately drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 21, 2014.
Yanukovych and his allies, many of them living in exile in Russia, are suspected of the murders and the theft of billions of dollars from Ukraine.
Shabunin described Horbatiuk as a “good investigator” and said he was not from the Shokin-Sevruk team.
“Horbatiuk is one of the independent figures at the Prosecutor General’s Office,” Sotnyk said. “He’s at least trying to do something… There are no complaints as far as his moral integrity is concerned.”
She said that the candidacies of Sakvarelidze and ex-Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko could also be discussed.
