Criminal investigations going nowhere fast.
With each passing day, it seems more certain that Ukrainians will never learn who committed many of the most heinous crimes in the nation’s 18-year history and who has been unfairly maligned. Ukraine’s highly politicized law enforcers appear to be no closer to solving the 2004 presidential election fraud, high-level corruption during the authoritarian rule of ex-President Leonid Kuchma or the 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, to name just a few of the crimes. In the meantime, new crimes keep happening that follow the same disturbing pattern of accusations followed by official inaction: The Nadra Bank scandal, the Victor Lozinsky murder investigation and the pedophile scandal with parliamentarians implicated are just a few of the newer and still-unsolved cases.
Here’s a safe bet: The investigations into Ukraine’s greatest unsolved crimes – some recent, some more than a decade old – are tucked away in the black hole of the General Prosecutor’s Office. Prosecutors, led since 2005 by Oleksandr Medvedko, have made astonishingly little progress in closing cases involving old crimes as new ones keep piling up.
The investigations, moreover, appear to stand no chance of getting solved soon. Since many of the crimes are politically tinged, any breakthroughs seem out of the question, especially before the next president or a new general prosecutor takes office. Of course, the unknown and unpunished guilty – those who committed murder, high-level corruption and other crimes – may never face justice. Time is on the side of injustice as witnesses die, evidence gets lost and the nation moves on.
But the problems with the nation’s judicial system run far deeper than simply a bad track record, if recent allegations are true.
Four lawmakers from Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s eponymous bloc in parliament on Dec. 2 accused some top General Prosecutor’s Office officials of using their position to extort contributions on behalf of the Ukrainian Association of Prosecutors, a commercial entity as well as a non-governmental organization, established in 2004 by some top government prosecutors.
Oleksandr Shinalskiy, deputy chief of the Prosecutor General’s Office, runs the twin groups, which have sent out letters asking for charitable donations, including cash, property and land.
The daily newspaper Kommersant-Ukraine on Dec. 10 published an appeal by more than a dozen high-ranking prosecutors to Medvedko in which they demand an investigation of alleged impropriety involving Shinalskiy. “The use of different bank accounts for the two organizations sharing the same name creates the opportunity for all kinds of financial schemes, shenanigans and money laundering,” the appeal to Medvedko reads. “If allegations about the illegal activities of the associations and their members are confirmed, those guilty should be fired from the prosecutor’s office.”
The signatories to the letter include some of the most powerful prosecutors in the office: Serhiy Lenskiy, chief of the prosecutor general’s main directorate for enforcing laws regulating transportation and military production; his deputy, Eduard Shevchenko; and Andriy Kurys, deputy chief of the prosecutor general’s office for conducting search and seizure operations, interrogation and pre-trial investigation in the transportation sector.
Medvedko, whose term expires in November, on Dec. 4 asked his subordinates to investigate the allegations. However, Yuriy Boichenko, head of the press service at the Prosecutor General’s Office, denied any wrongdoing – even as his own colleagues undercut his claim.
Boichenko said that the nation’s 11,000 prosecutors nationwide earn less on average than the nation’s police offices. “For top prosecutors the annual salary may go as high as $25,000 (Hr 200,000),” Boichenko said.
But the spokesman denied that low salaries mean that prosecutors are politicized or susceptible to corruption. He cited statistics showing their effectiveness. According to their own data, the Prosecutor General’s Office has responded to 120,000 law violations involving over 100,000 individuals this year to date. It has recovered around $250 million in state funds, including $100 million in budget funds, according to Boichenko, who said the law enforcement agency has so far received about 300,000 requests for information in 2009. “How cases are investigated occurs independently of the political calendar,” Boichenko said.
The charges are just one more blow against a criminal justice that is widely viewed as rotten to its core. As it is, judges are believed to sell favorable verdicts and court rulings to the highest bidder or to their political patrons, while police on the street are still regarded warily as bribe takers.
Prosecutors are also commonly accused of launching probes in return for a fee or as favor to allies. Whether because of ineptness or political pressure, the dismal track record of the nation’s prosecutors has helped to feed Ukraine’s image abroad as a lawless and barbaric place. And no one knows this better than Ukrainians themselves.
Oleh Lytvak, head of the Presidential Secretariat for coordinating law enforcement activities, told UNIAN news agency on Dec. 1 that government prosecutors are still unprofessional and highly politicized.
“We have not gotten to the point in Ukraine where law enforcement agencies have cured themselves of the illness of serving party interests instead of obeying the law,” Lytvak said. “It’s not a secret today that the country’s judicial system is womb of one political force, and the police are in another. I should also add that people who work in the prosecutor’s office are not virgin angels. They are smart people who can see the influence of political parties on government appointments.”
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has often expressed her frustration with state prosecutors, including on Nov. 26 during a press conference in parliament.
“The [Prosecutor General’s Office] is today like a limited liability company, one controlled by Party of Regions leaders, who have agreed with the president on who should be in charge,” Tymoshenko said.
During a Dec. 4 television appearance, Tymoshenko pledged that if she wins the presidential election next year, an “honest” prosecutor would be hired and many unsolved crimes could be solved.
Ukraine’s national prosecutors usually conduct criminal investigations only in major cases, many involving police or public officials. Also, they are in charge of supervising police work and directing the police in their probes involving other law enforcement agencies, including the police, State Security Service and tax police.
Yevhen Zakharov, co-founder the Kharkiv Helsinki Human Rights Group, said that the vertically-integrated Prosecutor General’s Office is highly susceptible to political influence. Zakharov said prosecutors have recently stepped up investigations of alleged police brutality. But prosecution, he said, remains highly selective/
“Ukrainian justice is not blind,” Zakharov said.
In this highly politicized environment, lawyers say law enforcement – from cops to prosecutors to judges – takes sides not based on facts or evidence, but on the interests of their benefactors.
Andriy Fedur, who worked as a prosecutor in Donetsk Oblast before starting a private law practice in Kyiv, said the “state prosecutor’s office is corrupt to the core. Lawlessness is so prevalent that the country might do better off if the state prosecutor’s office were closed down for a couple of years.”
Victor Aheev, an experienced criminal lawyer who has faced off numerous times against district attorneys across Ukraine, said that few believe that prosecutors put the interests of the state first. “The Prosecutor General’s Office is completely politicized. It has very little credibility or prestige left,” Aheev said, noting polls showing that most Ukrainians have little faith in prosecutors and the judiciary.
Valentyna Telychenko, a lawyer for Myroslava Gongadze, the widow of murdered journalist Georgiy Gongadze, said that state prosecutors have learned nothing new from the prime suspect in the case, Oleksiy Pukach, who was arrested five months ago.
“Government investigators are going through the motions,” Telnychenko said. “They are imitating work.”
Whatever the case, Medvedko’s job appears secure for now. He can only be removed before his November term expires by President Victor Yushchenko with confirmation by the Verkhovna Rada. The president and parliament have agreed on little lately.
Yushchenko, in addressing prosecutors on their annual holiday on Dec. 1, asked them to live up to their mission.
“You are a special group of state workers. Tens of millions of fellow Ukrainians look at you. Much in government depends on how you function, on your valor, professionalism and patriotism,” Yushchenko said. “I understand very well how politicization hinders professionalism. Your professional activities must be outside of the realm of politics.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Peter Byrne can be reached at [email protected].
