Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has delegated the immediate superior of a high-profile corruption suspect to choose the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, prompting a backlash from civic activists.
Critics say that this is the latest case of sabotage of anti-corruption efforts by Shokin, who faces a growing drive in parliament to oust him for his ineffectiveness in prosecuting cases of high-level crime and corruption.
His critics say Shokin’s resistance is aimed at blunting the work of Deputy Prosecutor Generals Davit Sakvareldize and Vitaly Kasko, who are seen as trying to actively crack down on corruption.
Andriy Demartino, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, declined to comment by phone.
The commission for selecting the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, who will oversee the Anti-Corruption Bureau’s activities, will comprise 11 people, including four chosen by the prosecutor general and seven by the Verkhovna Rada.
Critics say President Petro Poroshenko has tried to bring anti-corruption prosecutors under his control and make it a political tool by de facto giving his appointee, the prosecutor general, and his majority faction in parliament a right to choose them.
Shokin delegated to the commission First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk; Yury Hryshchenko, head of the office’s main investigative department; Roman Balyta, a deputy head of the department for criminal investigations oversight, and Mykola Sadovy, a deputy head of the human resources department.
Hryshchenko was the boss of Volodymyr Shapakin, former first deputy head of the main investigative department, who was arrested in a sting operation organized by Sakvarelidze, Kasko and the Security Service of Ukraine on July 6 and charged with bribery.
During the operation against Shapakin and Oleksandr Korniyets, an ex-deputy chief of the Kyiv Oblast prosecutor’s office, 104 cut diamonds were found, earning them the nickname “diamond prosecutors.”
“Shokin appointed a man who didn’t see the ‘diamond prosecutor’ right under his nose to choose the chief anti-corruption prosecutor,” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, said at a news briefing on Aug. 28. “I see an explicit attempt to bring the whole process of (anti-corruption prosecutors’) selection under the control of the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
Shabunin said Shokin had chosen “people of the old system who are interested in preserving it.”
“It’s quite telling that the prosecutor general didn’t see any candidates among Davit Sakvarelidze’s reformers,” he added.
To offset Shokin’s candidates, the Anti-Corruption Center proposed 10 other candidates, including foreigners and Ukrainian investigative journalists.
These include Shabunin himself, Mary Butler, a deputy chief of the U.S. Justice department’s asset forfeiture and money laundering unit; Giovanni Kessler, director general of the European Anti-Fraud Office; journalist Oleksa Shalaisky from the Nashi Hroshi anti-corruption project, and Dmytro Gnap from the Slidstvo.info investigative journalism project.
Others are Viktor Musiyaka, a lawyer and co-author of Ukraine’s Constitution; Volodymyr Halahan, a law professor at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy; Taras Kachka, the State Fiscal Service’s business ombudsman; Tetiana Kozachenko, head of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department, and human rights activist Oleksandra Matviychuk.
Viktoria Voytsytska, a Verkhovna Rada member from the Samopomich party, told the Kyiv Post she knew Shabunin and Kozachenko personally and had a positive attitude towards Kessler.
Samopomich has not discussed the list yet, however, she added.
“The commission must comprise not only civic activists and Ukrainian opinion leaders but also those who have good reputation abroad,” she said.
The chief anti-corruption prosecutor will likely be appointed in the first week of October, Shabunin said.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau itself was initially scheduled to start working on Oct. 1.
However, Shabunin said the launch was likely to be delayed to December.
Earlier this month the Anti-Corruption Bureau chose the first 70 anti-corruption detectives.
Amid what they see as Shokin’s efforts to sabotage anti-corruption efforts, his opponents in parliament have been pushing for dismissing him. Sobolev said on Aug. 17 that 109 signatures had been collected for firing the prosecutor general, while 150 are necessary to put the issue on parliament’s agenda.
Shokin and Sevruk have been involved in a long-running standoff with reformists Sakvarelidze and Kasko.
The reformist prosecutors said in July that the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office had been pressuring them to halt the bribery case against Korniyets and Shapakin by starting two criminal investigations against prosecutors reporting to Kasko and Sakvarelidze.
In August civic activist Shabunin said Shokin had rendered Kasko powerless in his efforts to prosecute top-level graft, while Sevruk lashed out at a testing system developed by Sakvarelidze to recruit new prosecutors.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
