While visiting Kyiv this week, Transparency International Chief Jose Ugaz reminded President Petro Poroshenko that leaders of countries can be put in jail.
“I was appointed by (former Peruvian President Alberto) Fujimori, and Fujimori is now convicted to 25 years of prison,” Ugaz said, before noting with a chuckle: “That’s something we also mentioned to the president and the prosecutor yesterday.”
Ugaz, a 56-year old Peruvian former attorney general who has led Transparency International since 2014, was visiting Kyiv on the invitation of Transparency International – Ukraine, and met with Poroshenko and General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko on June 6.
NABU blues
Ugaz told the Kyiv Post in an interview that he supports new anti-corruption measures and institutions adopted by the government, “but that we would like to see them already operating and most of them are not still enforced.”
Ukraine founded the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine in October 2014, after parliament passed a law creating it. The organization, headed by former Kyiv city prosecutor Artem Sytnyk, has been given a number of high-profile cases, but has yet to bring any to trial.
“The experience with anti-corruption agencies has not been a very successful one,” Ugaz said. “I would say that in most of the countries it has failed.”
He went on to say that the failure has occurred due to one reason – “a lack of independence.”
Ugaz added that any dependence on the executive who appoints a prosecutor likely leads to “some restrictions in the independence of the investigation.”
There are exceptions to this rule. Ugaz, as an ad-hoc prosecutor in Peru, brought down Fujimori in a corruption investigation that saw the former Peruvian leader sentenced to 25 years in prison. The probe returned $205 million in looted assets to Peru.
Poroshenko and Lutsenko “told me they knew that,” Ugaz said, laughing. “The prosecutor insisted that he has strong political will to make this work, so we will have to see.”
Transparency International Chief Jose Ugaz at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy on June 7. (Andrew Sherepenko)
‘…ask for help’
One parallel experience that Ugaz continuously referred to was that of Guatemala, whose president, vice president, and parliamentary speaker are in prison over a corruption scandal.
Ugaz said that a team of international financial crime experts had set up in the country in a bid to help the inexperienced Guatemalan authorities investigate the wrongdoing.
Ukraine, which also lacks expertise in investigating complex white collar crime, could benefit from such international help, Ugaz said.
“If you don’t have the expertise, you have to ask for help,” Ugaz said, before adding that Lutsenko told him that “he was seriously working on some issues in order to break impunity.”
Cast against Ukraine’s 25-year history of political prosecutions and corruption in law enforcement, Ugaz also said that he offered concrete help to the government.
“We can bring some external intelligence to the local authorities,” Ugaz said. “That’s what I offered the president yesterday, and he asked the general prosecutor to look after it. We’ll see.”
