Oleg Sukhov: Reformer and anti-reformer of the week

Published June 16, 2016 at 10:37 pm

Yevhenia Zakrevska and Dmytro Sus .

Photo by Courtesy

Reformer of the week

Yevhenia Zakrevska

Yevhenia Zakrevska, a lawyer representing people killed during the EuroMaidan Revolution, has pushed hard for the cleansing of the police of corrupt and incompetent officials.

In recent weeks Zakrevska, a member of a police vetting commission, lambasted Interior Minister Arsen Avakov for depriving civil society of its influence on vetting commissions, thus blocking the police reform.

Last week Zarkrevska and other activists published documentary evidence, according to which Ihor Fadeyev, a member of a police vetting commission in Zhytomyr Oblast, has the same name and birth date as those of a notorious mafia boss. Fadeyev, who was chosen by Avakov’s team but expelled from the commission amid the scandal, denies having connections to organized crime.

Zakrevska, who represents the victims in the case on the murder of over 100 EuroMaidan protesters, has also backed reformist officials within the Prosecutor General’s Office, including top prosecutor Serhiy Horbatiuk.

Anti-reformer of the week

Dmytro Sus

Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko appointed Dmytro Sus, a controversial prosecutor accused of fabricating political cases, as a deputy head of the department for high profile economic crimes last week.

He also appointed Volodymyr Hutsulyak as head of the department.

Sus and Hutsylyak have opened criminal cases against ex-deputy prosecutor generals Davit Sakvarelidze and Vitaly Kasko, Odesa Oblast Administration and the Anti-Corruption Action Center. Critics say the cases are a political vendetta against these people and organizations for their criticism of prosecutorial corruption.

Lutsenko has himself described the work of Sus and Hutsulyak as dubious and unsatisfactory, and promised to replace them. But he failed to keep his promise, prompting a backlash from civil society.

The department headed by Hutsulyak and Sus is effectively run by lawmakers Ihor Kononenko and Oleksander Hranovsky, major allies of President Petro Poroshenko, according to outspoken parliamentarian Sergii Leshchenko. Kononenko and Hranovsky deny the accusations.