One by one, four masked activists wearing the pictures of the current and two previous prosecutor generals, and of President Petro Poroshenko, passed mock criminal cases to each other.
At the end of the
chain, the masked protester with Poroshenko’s image would toss each portfolio
folder, bearing the names of wanted officials associated with the disgraced
presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, into an outsized toilet made of polystyerene.
The theatrical
message, staged by the Anticorruption Action Center at Parliament on June 17,
was meant to show how authorities are “flushing” important corruption cases
down the toilet, according to the organization’s press release. Not one former
high-level official has been convicted dating to February 2014 when the
EuroMaidan Revolution ousted the corrupt regime of Yanukovych, suspected of
stealing billions of dollars.
This trend is at
risk of continuing if Parliament passes a bill on June 18 that would make the
much touted and newly formed Anti-Corruption Bureau beholden to the president
via the general prosecutor whom he appoints, according to the group’s head
Daria Kaleniuk. Established in January, the graft-fighting agency is charged
with investigating allegations
of corruption by senior government officials, including the president, members
of the Cabinet of Ministers, Parliament and oblast governors.
They were there
to urge Parliament to make changes to a bill on June 18 that passed a first
reading submitted by the president’s legislative faction. In its current form,
the prosecutor general and Parliament would each appoint five members to a
commission that selects the special prosecutor who will be attached to the
corruption-fighting bureau. He and his team of prosecutors are to handle the
investigative aspects of cases like securing wire taps, court orders for search
and seizure, the freezing of assets, as well as other crucial functions.
However, the
procedure for choosing the special prosecutor, according to group chairman
Vitaliy Shabunin, would reduce the agency’s independence since the pro-presidential
bloc is a majority and Poroshenko appoints the prosecutor. The bill furthermore
doesn’t allow the special prosecutor to choose his subordinates leaving that up
to the general prosecutor.
“We especially
included the creation of a new (special) prosecutor into the bill on the
Anti-Corruption Bureau knowing that if the prosecutor’s office continues
handling the bureau’s cases, then they’re as good as buried,” Shabunin said
outside of Parliament. “That’s why this (government) body should be completely
independent from politicians and the prosecutor general, which for that past
year and a half hasn’t arrested one high-level corrupt official.”
The
Anti-Corruption Action Center as well as experts from watchdogs Transparency
International-Ukraine and Reanimation Package of Reforms, instead, propose that
Parliament, via a quota system based on representation, choose seven members of
the selection committee, and three from the Prosecutor General’s office. Once
appointed, the special prosecutor himself would choose who serves underneath
him, according to their proposals.
“We need an
independent person in this post who will sever the corrupt officials and not be
managed by them,” said lawmaker Yegor Sobolev of the Samopomich Party and head
of the legislature’s anti-corruption committee.
Corruption
watchdogs have also cried foul over
how four members were chosen to a panel that is supposed to appoint experts to
another crime-fighting agency, the newly
formed National Agency for Prevention of Corruption.
The Cabinet of Ministers allegedly rigged how four of the
eight members of the selection committee were chosen that will appoint the
experts, according to the Anticorruption Action Center. The group says the four
are not independent.
The four committee members were to be
chosen from among nongovernmental organizations with experience in
anti-corruption issues. The other four each were to be appointed by Parliament,
the Cabinet, president and the National Agency on Civil Service.
When the Cabinet convened a meeting on May
17 to choose the non-profit quota, according to a statement by the
Anticorruption Action Center, delegates from 45 groups, “most of which have no
anti-corruption experience, took part in the voting which appeared to be well
orchestrated.”
On June 5 Transparency
International-Ukraine filed a lawsuit to revoke the vote on the four non-profit
group members of the selection committee.
