As the future of the corrupt and ineffective Prosecutor General’s Office hangs in the balance, allies of ousted Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin are being accused of taking revenge on honest reformers in their midst by thwarting their work.
Reformist Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze on Feb. 23 accused acting Prosecutor General Yuriy Sevruk of blocking the work of investigators in charge of corruption cases against prosecutors.
Vladyslav Kutsenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, denied the accusations, saying that reformist investigators were just being transferred from one unit to another and have not been fired. But later he accused some of them of having a luxury lifestyle, posting on Feb. 25 what he said was their photos from Facebook.
Shokin went on vacation on Feb. 16 and then resigned at the urging of his patron, President Petro Poroshenko. But his resignation awaits approval by the Verkhovna Rada, which does not reconvene until March 15.
The fear now is that Poroshenko will refuse to surrender control of the nation’s 18,000 prosecutors and will, yet again, appoint another loyalist rather than a truly independent prosecutor.
The uncertainty only serves to further stall investigations under way against ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies, as well as to continue derailing any investigations of corruption that is still flourishing under the Poroshenko era.
Anti-corruption units nixed
Another top reformer, Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko, resigned earlier this month, citing massive corruption and the sabotage of all major cases by Shokin.
Kasko also said that many allegations of high-level corruption against powerful suspects are not even being pursued by prosecutors because of Shokin’s interference.
Now Sakvarelidze is saying these obstructions are continuing even without Shokin.
In June, investigators arrested top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniets and Volodymyr Shapakin in a landmark bribery case by two special internal anti-corruption units headed by Kasko and Sakvarelidze.
This month, the two units — one supervisory, another investigatory — were disbanded with the explanation that their functions overlap with the General Inspection Service, formally created last November but still not working.
Sakvarelidze wrote on Feb. 23 that Shokin and Sevruk had been thwarting the transfer of the anti-corruption units’ employees to the General Inspection Service, which will focus on graft cases against prosecutors. He wrote that the units’ investigators and prosecutors have been out of work for two weeks.
“The prosecutor general or the acting prosecutor general, who’s carrying out his instructions, are making – to put it mildly – paradoxical decisions and violating the promise that they made to me to appoint all of them to the newly created General Inspection Service,” Sakvarelidze said.
Moreover, the internal security department is “constantly pressuring our employees who participated in high-profile cases against corrupt prosecutors,” Sakvarelidze said.
Kasko said on Feb. 15 that the department had been liquidated to prevent investigators from completing the bribery case against Korniets and opening two other cases against him. The liquidation followed the filing of a second notice of suspicion against Korniets, Kasko added.
Last year Kasko and Sakvarelidze also said that the Prosecutor General’s Office had opened criminal cases against the investigators to block their work. The Prosecutor General’s Office has denied their accusations, attributing them to “public relations stunts.”
Investigation delays
Apart from sabotage against those trying to root out suspected corruption among prosecutors, the work of law enforcement agencies is also being crippled by the delay in the transfer of prosecutorial investigative functions to the yet-to-be-created State Investigation Bureau.
The law on the bureau was signed last month, and it is scheduled to be launched on March 1. Since the bureau is unlikely to be launched by that date, all investigations being carried out by the Prosecutor General’s Office may be suspended.
The Verkhovna Rada has not allocated any funds for the bureau for this year and has been slow to create a commission to select the bureau’s leadership, Olena Sotnyk, a lawmaker from the Samopomich party, told the Kyiv Post.
“We’ll be fortunate if the bureau is formed by the end of this year,” she said. “It will be launched only next year if it gets funding and if everyone is ok.”
Appointment delays
The appointment of a new prosecutor general is also being postponed. Even if Shokin’s resignation is approved by parliament in March, Poroshenko might decide not to appoint a new prosecutor general until a new government coalition is created, Sotnyk said.
An option that would suit Poroshenko perfectly is to keep his loyalist Sevruk as acting prosecutor general indefinitely, she added.
One reason for the delay with appointing a new prosecutor general is that the president is unwilling to select an independent person. However, it would be difficult for him to appoint a loyalist due to pressure from civil society and the West, Vitaly Shabunin, head of the AntiCorruption Action Center’s management board, said.
“Poroshenko has cornered himself because he doesn’t understand who he can appoint so that he doesn’t infuriate the West and professionals within Ukraine and gets a loyal prosecutor general at the same time,” Shabunin added.
Candidates for job
Sevruk has been tapped as a potential candidate for the job of prosecutor general.
But he has spoken out against prosecutorial reform and showed during the competitive hiring procedure for prosecutors that he is just a tool for Poroshenko, Shabunin said.
“Sevruk won’t be approved by parliament,” he argued. “I can’t imagine who would vote for Sevruk. He is Shokin’s other face. He is absolutely dependent, lacks willpower and is controlled by the president.”
Another candidate for the job of prosecutor general who has been discussed by lawmakers is Yuriy Lutsenko, a Poroshenko loyalist and head of his faction in parliament.
Though he technically has no right for the job because he lacks prosecutorial experience, analysts speculate that changes could be made to Ukrainian law to allow him to become prosecutor general.
“We’ve had two prosecutor generals who were dependent on the president,” Shabunin said. “A dependent prosecutor general cannot be efficient. It’s nonsense and an oxymoron.”
However, it’s not clear if Lutsenko will agree to take the job, because it would mean his “political death,” given society’s distrust of prosecutors, Shabunin added.
Transparent competition
Lawmakers and representatives of civil society argue that the only way to appoint an efficient and independent prosecutor general is by holding a transparent competition for the job.
And that will take even more time, confirming for Ukraine the legal maxim that justice delayed is justice denied.
Sotnyk argued that “any candidacy will be inappropriate and will not be trusted by society unless approved through an open competition.”
This person should be from outside the corrupt prosecutorial system and does not even have to have prosecutorial experience, she added.
Euro-optimists, a pro-European group of Verkhovna Rada members, made a similar proposal, saying on Feb. 20 that Poroshenko should submit a short list of several candidates who must be examined and discussed by civil society.
“Inviting representatives of civil society and journalists to examine the candidates’ past will help to avoid the appointment of a person burdened with a corrupt past or inappropriate behavior and will increase society’s trust in this candidacy and the prosecutorial system in general,” they said. Mustafa Nayyem, one of the Euro-optimists, wrote on Facebook on Feb. 20 that not a single prosecutor general since the EuroMaidan Revolution had been “appointed in a transparent way, and all of them were objects of bargaining and back-door scheming.”
“All of them quit in a shameful and scandalous way under public pressure,” Nayyem said. “We propose getting out of this vicious circle.”
