A police raid at the home and workplace of a Justice Ministry official who leads the nation's lustration campaign has called into question the Ukrainian government's commitment to cleansing the nation's political life of top officials from the ousted regime of Viktor Yanukovych and Communist Party members.
Tetiana Kozachenko, head of the lustration department of the Justice Ministry, said that police broke into her apartment and searched her ministry office on April 21. They were looking for a letter reportedly signed by Deputy Justice Minister Natalia Sevostianova to spare a top Fiscal Service official from lustration. The letter turned out to be a fake.
Kozachenko said she was the one who discovered the fraudulent letter in the first place, during her inspection of the Fiscal Service staff. There were no searches at the homes of others, including Sevostianova, whose signature is on the forged letter. Police found nothing during the search, according to Kozachenko.
But lawmakers and public activists criticized the search and the authorities, including President Petro Poroshenko, for interfering with the political cleansing process.
Many believed that the search was an attempt to intimidate Kozachenko, who leads the implementation of the lustration law, adopted last fall to rid the country’s politics from officials who held top positions under Yanukovych, who is wanted on murder and corruption charges, and Communist Party members.
Kozachenko said that the only rationale for searching her apartment is to intimidate and pressure her.
She hasn’t accused anyone by name.
But Karl Volokh from the non-governmental Lustration Committee did.
He blamed Vitaliy Sakal, the Interior Ministry’s top investigator, for the search. The investigator subsequently resigned on April 23, Interior Minister Arsen Avokov said on his Facebook page. In Volokh’s words, the raid is a response to Kozachenko’s attempts to fire Sakal and another top Interior Ministry official, Vasyl Paskal.
Both their names feature on a list of the top 50 officials who must be lustrated, according to the group. They held high positions in law enforcement bodies under the regime of Yanukovych, who fled to Russia on Feb. 22, 2014, abandoning his presidency.
“One of them stands behind the search, so it’s easy to notice the conflict of interests and abuse of power,” Volokh told the Kyiv Post.
He said Ukraine’s leaders lack the political will to enforce anti-corruption and lustration laws.
Yegor Sobolev, the head of the Verkhovna Rada’s anti-corruption committee and one of the authors of the lustration law, said that all the main state agencies resist lustration, including Poroshenko.
“Lustration is being sabotaged by the state apparatus, led, unfortunately, by the president,” he said.
Poroshenko’s press secretary wasn’t immediately available for a comment.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk earlier this month said at a Cabinet hearing that about 2,000 officials of the previous regime have already been lustrated, with nearly 1,500 quitting voluntarily and 427 dismissed. However, it’s unclear how many of Yanukovych’s cronies remain in government.
An even bigger threat to lustration comes from the Constitutional Court that may repeal the law entirely.
It has been argued that collective dismissals stipulated by the law violate Article 61 of the Ukrainian Constitution, according to which legal responsibility must be individual.
On April 16, the Constitutional Court started hearings on the issue, but postponed the procedures indefinitely.
The hearings are based on three submissions – two were made by the Supreme Court, and one by the group of 47 lawmakers, mostly from the Opposition Bloc parliamentary faction, the successor of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
One of them, Mykola Skoryk, told Kyiv Post that the lustration, backed by Sobolev, Yatsenyuk and Petrenko, is “a sublimation of revenge and fight against political rivals”.
“The current ‘lustration’ only weakens Ukraine instead of making it stronger,” he said, adding that it “squeezes out officials, who were serving their country and had nothing to do with any crimes.”
The European Union’s advisory body on constitutional law, the Venice Commission, initially criticized the bill for not meeting international standards. In December it toned down its language saying that “the law in its current form contained several serious shortcomings and welcomed the readiness of the Ukrainian authorities to amend the law in line with the Ukrainian Constitution and European standards.” In June, the commission will issue a revised opinion on the law.
Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko told reporters after the hearing that the judges agreed to wait until Ukraine’s parliament vote on changes to the lustration law. Petrenko said the revised law should eliminate constitutional challenges. Legislation was submitted to parliament on April 21.
Critics also say there is a conflict of interest in the Constitutional Court, since seven of the currently serving judges who are asked to rule on the law are subject to lustration, according to Petrenko.
He also pointed out that some of the judges on the Constitutional Court voted in 2010 for amendments to the Constitution that concentrated powers under Yanukovych and the executive branch.
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
