Several highly publicized arrests and raids are part of what President Petro Poroshenko claims is the start of a renewed law enforcement crackdown on top-level crime and corruption.
Others dismiss the recent events, however, as publicity stunts by an administration and government unwilling to surrender political control of a corrupt, subservient and ineffective judicial system.
“We don’t have justice here but just a show, and as long as our prosecutor general is a puppet, the show will go on,” Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Post.
Even Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk acknowledged the scope of the problem, saying last month that he wants all of the nation’s 9,000 judges fired because “the key corruption is still in the judiciary.” He also pledged to support the creation of a state investigative agency and to curb the prosecutorial powers, which he described as a “huge monster that controls everything in this country – starting with every single investigation and ending with every single investigation. This is not right.”
Meanwhile, the drive to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin keeps gaining allies with 120 members of parliament calling for his ouster.
Poroshenko’s spokesman Sviatoslav Tsegolko, and Andriy Demartino, a prosecutorial spokesman, did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
Hennady Korban, the former deputy governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast under billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky and the leader of the Ukrop Party, was arrested on Oct. 31 and video of the police raid broadcast. He is suspected of running an organized crime group and embezzling Hr 40 million. Korban, an opponent of Poroshenko, dismisses the charges as politically motivated.
Following Korban’s arrest, Poroshenko and his appointees, Shokin and Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) chief Vasyl Hrytsak, said they wouldn’t stop at Korban. “This is just a beginning, anti-corruption efforts and the restoration of the rule of law will continue,” Poroshenko said on Nov. 1. “Nobody is immune from prosecution for corruption.”
Several days later investigators said they tried to serve summonses to three ex-allies of disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych, while the SBU said it was investigating a tax evasion case against a supermarket chain owned by Yanukovych associate Rinat Akhmetov.
On Nov. 5, the last justice minister under Yanukovych, Olena Lukash, was detained upon arrival to Ukraine, according to the SBU. Lukash dismissed the report on her detention as a PR stunt, saying she had just voluntarily gone to investigators for an interrogation.
Critics of Poroshenko and the government said the moves were intended to divert attention from the unwillingness of top politicians to create an independent and effective law enforcement system.
Shokin’s failure to cleanse his own ranks of graft and prosecute high-profile crimes related to the EuroMaidan Revolution has prompted 120 lawmakers to sign on to a petition to have him fired. Furthermore, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt, European Union Ambassador Jan Tombinski and corruption watchdog Transparency International have all stated that the prosecutor’s office is thwarting changes meant to improve the rule of law.
Vasyl Hrytsak, head of the Security Service of Ukraine and Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin (R) at a news briefing on Nov. 2. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Moreover, apart from ex-Justice Minister Lukash, not a single high-ranking associate of Yanukovych is currently in custody, and not a single corruption case against the former president or his allies has gone to court.
When asked about the lack of progress in the investigations at a briefing on Nov. 2, Shokin urged the Kyiv Post to provide him with evidence of wrongdoing.
Supporters of Poroshenko and Shokin said that Korban’s arrest is part of a campaign to end the grip that oligarchs have on the country’s government and economy. There have been numerous journalistic investigations implicating Korban in various crimes, they said.
But he was arrested without court authorization, which is a procedural violation, his lawyer Oksana Tomchuk told the Kyiv Post.
The embezzlement charges against him are groundless because Korban is effectively accused of stealing from a charity of which he is both the founder and main benefactor, Korban’s supporters said. On Nov. 2, he was brought to a court in Chernihiv, where four judges were disqualified before Korban was released and detained again without court authorization – also a blatant procedural violation, according to Tomchuk.
Yet another breach of procedure is that Korban received no notice of suspicion after he was arrested for the second time in Chernihiv, Tomchuk said. Prosecutors maintain that Korban had received a notice of suspicion and is charged with threatening members of an elections commission in Dnipropetrovsk.
Anti-corruption activist Kaleniuk told the Kyiv Post that Korban’s arrest is not the start of a genuine crackdown on top-level crime. The proof of a real crackdown will come with public trials and the convictions of those who are guilty. Too often, “people are just released from custody” after arrest, she said, with cases rarely going to trial.
The case against Korban follows the arrest of Radical Party lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk, another opponent of Poroshenko, on bribery charges in September. His arrest also was made in dramatic style, after Shokin showed parliament video of Mosiychuk purportedly taking bribes.
Critics said both cases are selective justice, at best, or no justice at all, because prosecutors are not investigating associates of Poroshenko or Yatsenyuk.
One such case is that of lawmaker Mykola Martynenko, who is under investigation by Swiss prosecutors on suspicion of bribery in a case started two years ago. Commenting on the Martynenko case in a Nov. 3 interview with Politico, Yatsenyuk made the absurd remark that no investigation will take place because Martynenko “strongly denies all these allegations.”
In an apparent effort to counter accusations of selective justice in the Korban and Mosiychuk cases, employees of the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office tried to serve summonses to lawmakers Oleksandr Vilkul, Natalya Korolevska and Vadym Novynsky – ex-allies of Yanukovych – in parliament on Nov. 2 but did not find them in the Verkhovna Rada building.
But the three lawmakers are just witnesses, not suspects.
The situation became increasingly comical when Korolevska said she had not received the summons and had been chasing after investigators in an effort to obtain it.
Olena Sotnyk, a Samopomich Party lawmaker, said that the investigators’ purpose was to “show off for the cameras to demonstrate that they’re not only launching political cases but also consistently giving summonses to everyone.”
Another accusation against Poroshenko and Shokin is that they are sabotaging the creation of an independent anti-corruption prosecutor’s office.
The Ukrainian branch of Transparency International criticized Ukrainian authorities on Nov. 2, saying that the country’s leadership and the prosecutor general were trying to turn the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office into a “puppet.”
Specifically, Shokin has refused to remove four controversial prosecutors from the commission for choosing the anti-corruption prosecutor, without whom a newly created graft-fighting agency cannot function.
Shokin’s people have unsuccessfully tried to block reformist Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko from becoming a candidate for the anti-corruption prosecutor’s job, said Sotnyk and Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board.
Controversial legal requirements have also prevented employees of reformist Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze’s General Inspection Office, which investigates prosecutors’ crimes, from becoming candidates.
Yet another problem is that, under current law, Shokin will still get to choose the anti-corruption prosecutor from three candidates selected by the commission and will also appoint the anti-corruption prosecutor’s subordinates, Sotnyk said. Moreover, candidates without prosecutorial experience are not eligible, which makes the selection of an independent candidate less likely.
Pyatt, the American ambassador, has flagged the overhaul of Ukraine’s failed prosecutorial system as an important condition for American assistance.
Prosecutors “must abandon the Soviet legacy of political control and corruption which has allowed the powerful – including those in government – to get away with influence peddling and human rights abuses. These acts of impunity undermine the rule of law and Ukraine’s future place in Europe’s community of free, prosperous, democratic nations,” Pyatt on Oct. 30 told a U.S-Ukraine Business Council/Kyiv School of Economics conference on legal reform in Kyiv.
“As I said in Odesa (on Sept. 24), the Prosecutor General’s Office must stop undermining reforms, stop protecting corrupt prosecutors within its ranks, such as the notorious ‘diamond prosecutors’ arrested in July, and stop blocking criminal investigations into bribery, graft, and political dealing,” Pyatt said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
