An alleged statement by an ally of President Petro Poroshenko about Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, triggered a scandal on Oct. 9 but was quickly denied by the president's faction in parliament.
Ihor Kononenko, a deputy head of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc in parliament, was cited by the RBC Ukraine news agency on Oct. 8 as saying that U.S. authorities had conceded to a demand from Poroshenko to fire Pyatt after the ambassador criticized the Prosector General’s Office of Ukraine.
The scandal comes amid long-running efforts by lawmakers and civil society to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin for his inability to prosecute any former or incumbent top officials in a nation awash in corruption.
The developments also coincide with calls to radically overhaul the politically subservient prosecutor’s office and make it an independent body capable of delivering justice.
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said on Oct. 9 that rumors that Pyatt would be fired were “pure fabrication.”
The bloc claimed that the RBC report on Pyatt was aimed at discrediting presidential forces ahead of the Oct. 25 local elections in Ukraine.
“This information does not correspond to reality,” the Petro Poroshenko Bloc said in a statement. “Ihor Kononenko has not made any comments about the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Nor has he made any statements on the Ukrainian president’s negotiations with the U.S. vice president or any other representatives of the international community.”
However, Maxim Kamenev, the author of the RBC Ukraine report, confirmed to the Kyiv Post that Kononenko had made the statement.
Kononenko was not available for comment, while Poroshenko’s spokesman Sviatoslav Tsegolko declined to comment.
Pyatt talked on Sept. 24 about “the failure of the institution of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to successfully fight internal corruption.”
“Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor General’s office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform,” he said. “In defiance of Ukraine’s leaders, these bad actors regularly hinder efforts to investigate and prosecute corrupt officials within the prosecutor general’s office. They intimidate and obstruct the efforts of those working honestly on reform initiatives within that same office.”
In response to Pyatt’s remarks, Poroshenko allegedly lambasted the ambassador, according to RBC Ukraine.
“As far as I know, the president told (U.S. Vice President Joseph) Biden in a harsh manner that U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt shouldn’t have made his statement about the quality of the work of the Prosecutor General’s Office under Shokin’s leadership,” RBC Ukraine quoted Kononenko as saying. “In response, he agreed and said that Pyatt would be recalled from Kyiv next February.”
This is not the first time Ukrainian authorities are accused of lying about the prosecutorial system in their interactions with Western partners.
While the Prosecutor General’s Office has claimed that Pyatt’s statement expressed his readiness to work with Shokin, civil society groups have accused the office of manipulating his statement and completely ignoring his devastating criticism of its activities.
Meanwhile, Poroshenko in September claimed that the European Union had no complaints against the composition of the commission for choosing the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, citing negotiations between Shokin and Jan Tombinski, head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine. Activists accused Shokin of lying and deceiving the president after Tombinski issued a statement saying that civil society’s concerns about the commission were valid.
Another top Western official who has criticized Shokin is U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. The U.S. Embassy said on Oct. 9 that her position was consistent with Pyatt’s comments.
“Like Ukraine’s police force, the Prosecutor General’s Office has to be reinvented as an institution that serves the citizens of Ukraine, rather than ripping them off,” she said in her testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Oct. 8. “That means it must investigate and successfully prosecute corruption and asset recovery cases – including locking up dirty personnel in the PGO itself.”
She said that Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze, who leads the Inspector General’s Office that investigates prosecutors accused of crime, “must be able to work independently and effectively, without political or judicial interference.”
Shokin and his other deputies have been accused of sabotaging the work of the Inspector General’s Office.
Nuland added that the government must appoint the chief anti-corruption prosecutor as soon as possible to investigate top officials’ crimes.
Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, said last month that the Prosecutor General’s Office and parliament were dragging their feet on selecting the anti-corruption prosecutor.
“Ukrainians also need a justice system that cannot be bought, one that will deliver verdicts, uphold the rule of law, and stop injustice, which was a key demand of the Maidan protests,” Nuland summed up.
Meanwhile, other critics of Ukraine’s prosecutorial system have come under attack.
First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk said on Oct. 7 that he would sue Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, after he lashed out at officials appointed by the prosecutor’s office to the commission for choosing the anti-corruption prosecutor.
“We’re waiting for him to either deny or confirm his information with documents by Friday,” Sevruk said. “Otherwise we’re going to file a lawsuit on Monday.”
Shabunin has said that Sevruk, who was appointed to the commission, was derailing Sakvarelidze’s reform aimed at hiring new prosecutors through a transparent competitive process.
He also argues that Yury Hryshchenko, another member of the commission and head of the office’s main investigative department, is controversial because he was the boss of a top prosecutor arrested in July and did not see his corruption “right under his nose.”
“Shokin’s militant clowns – namely his first deputy – said that they would sue me,” Shabunin wrote in a Facebook post on Oct. 9. “…I eagerly want the Prosecutor General’s Office to file a lawsuit against me.”
He said that “Poroshenko’s cadres had brought the prosecutor’s office down to a level lower than under (Viktor) Pshonka,” referring to disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s top prosecutor.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
