An alleged attempt by the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office on July 14 to protect two top prosecutors accused of bribery has prompted a public backlash and claims that some Ukrainian officials are trying to sabotage the country’s reforms.
The prosecutors in question, Volodymyr Shapakin and Oleksandr
Korniyets, were arrested last week with some $500,000 in valuables in a sting
operation spearheaded by two deputy prosecutor generals, Davit Sakvarelidze and
Vitaly Kasko, and Security Service (SBU) Chief Vasyl Hrytsak.
But Shapakin and Korniyets were released on bail on July 8 by
Kyiv’s Pechersky Court in what critics say proved the Ukrainian court system’s
unwillingness to bring corrupt officials to justice.
And now lawmakers and activists say that Sakvarelidze, Kasko,
and the investigators they sent to arrest the top prosecutors are under attack
from Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and his first deputy, Volodymyr Huzyr.
Critics have accused Shokin and Huzyr of covering up corruption and called for
their resignation.
Shokin dismissed the allegations as “utter nonsense.”
“There are no criminal cases against investigators and
prosecutors involved in the case against Shapakin and Korniyets,” he told
Ukrainska Pravda. “There have been no searches at those prosecutors’ offices
and we are not planning any.”
Sakvarelidze, Kasko and Andriy Demartino, a
spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, were
not available by phone.
Meanwhile, President Petro Poroshenko’s spokesman Sviatoslav
Tsegolko wrote on Facebook that Shokin and Sakvarelidze had agreed to work as a
single team and that the case against Shapakin and Korniyets would be
completed.
However, Kasko told the LigaBusinessInform news site that
there was indeed a criminal case against the investigators who searched the
offices of Shapakin and Korniyets.
“[The leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office] is
exerting pressure by starting internal probes and criminal cases,” he said.
“First there was one case [against investigators who searched the top
prosecutors’ offices], but it was closed as a result of public pressure.
Yesterday they opened a new case.”
Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada from the Bloc
of Petro Poroshenko faction, wrote on Facebook on July 14 that the Prosecutor
General’s Office had opened a case against investigators, prosecutors, SBU
employees and judges of the Kyiv Court of Appeals involved in the investigation
against Shapakin and Korniyets. They are accused of including unreliable evidence
in the case files, he added.
Yury Butusov, the chief editor of the censor.net news site,
published a photo of a document with instructions from the Prosecutor General’s
Office to investigate the case against investigators reporting to Sakvarelidze
and Kasko.
Leshchenko described the move as a “counter-revolution at the
Prosecutor General’s Office.”
“The Sakvarelidze-Kasko team believes this to be an attempt
to sabotage the case against Huzyr’s people,” he said. “President [Petro]
Poroshenko knows what’s happening… Who will win – the reactionaries or the
reformers, corrupt officials or those who fight against corruption – depends on
Poroshenko’s reaction now.”
Another lawmaker of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Mustafa
Nayyem, wrote on Facebook that Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Stolyarchuk was
seeking to obtain court authorization to search the offices of investigators
reporting to Sakvarelidze and Kasko and to wiretap them.
He also said that Shokin had gone to another court to
persuade it to rule that the searches at the offices of Shapakin and Korniyets
were illegal.
Nayyem wrote that the Prosecutor General’s Office had even
failed to fire the prosecutors accused of corruption, and had just suspended
them temporarily.
He also said last week that a case had been opened against
Sakvarelidze on charges of seizing a government building, while the Prosecutor
General’s Office denied it at the time.
Karl Volokh, a member of the Civic Lustration Committee, went
as far as to call Shokin’s attempts to prosecute Sakvarelidze’s investigators
as a “coup d’etat.”
“Shokin has hidden Huzyr, who left too many fingerprints, by
sending him on vacation, and launched an attack himself,” Volokh wrote on
Facebook. “… I believe this is clearly a coup d’etat. Now ether we’ll defeat
them or the other way around.”
Bacho Korchilava, an ex-spokesman for Georgia’s embassy and a
blogger, agreed.
“[The leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office] has gone
Pshonka’s way, deciding to ignore society’s interests and to show that they are
the main feudal lords in the country,” Korchilava wrote on Facebook, referring
to Viktor Pshonka, who was prosecutor general under ousted President Viktor
Yanukovych and who now faces corruption charges.
“…Shokin and Huzyr have created a situation in which it will
be either they or Sakvarelidze who remain at the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
Viktoria Voytsitska, a Verkhovna Rada member from the
Samopomich faction, told the Kyiv Post that Sakvarelidze was “the person who
began cleansing the Prosecutor General’s Office of scoundrels” and that he was
now “under threat.”
“As soon as we hear that searches are being conducted [at the
offices of Sakvarelidze’s people], our entire faction or some of us will go
there to help them,” she said.
Yury Derevyanko, a lawmaker from the Volya party, agreed,
saying that the actions of the Prosecutor General’s Office were “an attempt to
purge those who tried to challenge the sacred cow, the Prosecutor General’s
Office.” He said the Verkhovna Rada’s anti-corruption committee had summoned Shokin,
Huzyr and Sakvarelidze to attend a committee meeting scheduled for July 14.
Lawmakers opposed to Shokin started collecting signatures in
the Verkhovna Rada for his dismissal several weeks ago.
According to Volokh, 82 signatures have been collected so
far, while 150 are needed to put the issue on the agenda.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
