Yegor Sobolev, the lawmaker leading the charge to fire the prosecutor general, says that President Petro Poroshenko is resisting because "loyalty is more important for Poroshenko than real eradication of corruption."
In July, Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin announced with great fanfare that a court had authorized the trial in absentia for disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
But, almost two years after the EuroMaidan Revolution began, not a single indictment in corruption cases against the former president or his allies has been sent to court.
Yegor Sobolev, a lawmaker from the Samopomich party and chairman of the Verkhovna Rada’s anti-corruption committee, believes that Shokin is stalling all high-profile investigations and covering up corrupt prosecutors.
The only way out is to replace Shokin, a loyalist of President Petro Poroshenko, with a truly independent prosecutor able to deliver impartial justice, Sobolev says.
Andriy Demartino, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, declined to comment.
Inefficiency and sabotage at the Prosecutor General’s Office has gotten out of hand to such an extent that even diplomats are using tough language.
Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said on Sept. 24 that “corrupt actors” under Shokin “are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform.”
This damning indictment of Shokin’s performance since he was appointed in February has given a boost to efforts by Sobolev and civil society to fire him.
Sobolev has so far collected 114 signatures in parliament for dismissing Shokin, still well short of the 150 signatures needed to put the issue on the agenda.
He said in an interview with the Kyiv Post that not a single signature has been collected since the Sept. 17 arrest of Radical Party lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk on suspicion of bribery. Critics see the arrest as political revenge by Shokin for Mosiychuk’s support for his firing.
“After Ihor’s arrest everyone started thinking ‘what if this happens to me tomorrow’?” Sobolev said. “One of Shokin’s goals is to show to lawmakers what consequences could happen to those who submit signatures for his dismissal.”
He attributed the slow pace of the drive to oust Shokin to a lack of principled lawmakers.
Many lawmakers are reluctant to back the sacking of Shokin because they are part of the system that covers up corruption, Sobolev said.
The president refuses to fire Shokin because “loyalty is more important for Poroshenko than real eradication of corruption,” Sobolev says.
Shokin was a protégé of Poroshenko as early as 2005, when he was a deputy prosecutor general, according to Sobolev. At that time Shokin told Sobolev, then a journalist, that Serhiy Kivalov and other members of the Central Election Commission accused of vote rigging in favor of Yanukovych in the 2004 presidential election would be soon convicted.
“These cases didn’t lead to convictions,” Sobolev said. “This is the main reason why we voted against his appointment as prosecutor general. Unfortunately his work proved that we were right.”
Shokin’s choice of four people for the commission to select the chief anti-corruption prosecutor also proves that he is not interested in fighting corruption, Sobolev said.
One of them, First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk, has been accused of sabotaging reform at the Prosecutor General’s Office. Another member – Yury Hryshchenko, head of the office’s main investigative department – has been lambasted because he was the boss of prosecutor Volodymyr Shapakin, who was arrested in a bribery case in July.
“Shokin appointed people who are linked to corruption to choose an anti-corruption prosecutor,” Sobolev said.
The three commission members delegated by the Petro Poroshenko Bloc – Volodymyr Horbach, Kateryna Levchenko and Yevhen Nishchuk – also raise doubts.
“These three people don’t have efficient experience in fighting corruption,” Sobolev said. “They didn’t show in the past that they can and are ready to stop it, but they still have a chance to show it now.”
Earlier this month Poroshenko claimed that the European Union had no complaints against the commission’s composition, citing negotiations between Shokin and Jan Tombinski, EU ambassador to Ukraine. Activists accused Shokin of lying and deceiving the president after Tombinski issued a statement saying that civil society’s concerns about the commission were valid.
Another complaint against Shokin is that not a single corruption case against Yanukovych and his allies has been sent to court.
NEWS ITEM: In a nation swimming in corruption, Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin is performing dismally, failing to prosecute anyone for major financial crimes or high-profile murders. “Not a single one of these investigations has been completed,” said lawmaker Yegor Sobolev. “Starting with (ex-President Viktor) Yanukovych’s gang and ending with incumbent top officials, all investigations are being sabotaged.”
Serhiy Horbatiuk, head of the prosecutorial department in charge of trials in absentia, told the Kyiv Post that the Yanukovych case would be sent to court after Spain makes a decision on extraditing ex-Finance Minister Yury Kolobov, a suspect in the same embezzlement case, to Ukraine.
Sobolev said that his anti-corruption committee had collected evidence on 200 cases of top officials’ corruption in the period before and after the revolution.
“Not a single one of these investigations has been completed,” he said. “Starting with Yanukovych’s gang and ending with incumbent top officials, all investigations are being sabotaged.”
Investigating corruption in its own ranks has also mostly remained a taboo for the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Corruption accusations against ex-deputy prosecutor generals Anatoly Danylenko and Volodymyr Huzyr have not been investigated.
Shokin has also been accused of trying to protect two top prosecutors accused of bribery, Oleksandr Korniyets and Volodymyr Shapakin, by starting criminal cases against Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze and his investigators who arrested them in July.
Some claim that Shokin had nothing to do with the matter but Sobolev believes the prosecutor general was in charge of sabotaging the Korniyets-Shapakin case.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is very hierarchical, and nothing important can happen without the prosecutor general’s permission, Sobolev argued.
Mustafa Nayyem, a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, wrote in July that Shokin had taken part in the attempts to protect Korniyets and Shapakin and that they were his protégés.
“The cases haven’t been sent to court yet,” Sobolev said. “This is another signal that they want to spearhead corruption, not to fight it.”
Serhiy Parashin, an ex-chief of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, told the Kyiv Post about a recent criminal case against the plant that he argues aimed to discredit its leadership.
He described the General Prosecutor’s Office as a “tool for discrediting people and an instrument of self-enrichment, not a law enforcement agency.”
“I hear things that can only happen in a mafia gang,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Money is paid for opening and closing criminal cases, Parashin said. “Do you think they don‘t bring it to the very top?” he added.
To make sure that the General Prosecutor’s Office is truly reformed and its head is independent, lawmakers including Sobolev drafted a bill last winter to choose an independent general prosecutor through a transparent competitive hiring process.
However, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Groysman has so far failed to submit the bill for voting, he said.
“Either society will make the incumbent president and parliament support this, or we will need a more principled president and parliament,” Sobolev added.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
