Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry wants Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to replace his controversial representatives on the commission for choosing the anti-corruption prosecutor, Yevropeiska Pravda reported on Oct. 20.
The news website posted a scanned copy of documents prepared by the ministry for a National Reform Council meeting on Oct. 19.
The Foreign Ministry’s press office and Andriy Demartino, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, declined to comment on the report by phone on Oct. 21.
The report comes as Shokin, an appointee of President Petro Poroshenko, is accused of sabotaging all high-profile investigations of corruption in Ukraine. He is also accused of derailing Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze’s initiative to hire new prosecutors in a competitive hiring process.
The commission members appointed by Shokin have been lambasted by lawmakers and anti-corruption watchdogs.
To meet the European Union’s demands, Shokin must replace his representatives with “people who are not politicians or government officials” by Oct. 23, the Foreign Ministry said, according to the documents published by Yevropeiska Pravda. That, in turn, would make the introduction of a visa-free regime with the EU possible, the documents read.
Shokin is also suspected of corruption.
Nashi Hroshi (Our Money), an investigative journalism project, reported earlier this month that Shokin had failed to declare his ownership of a third of a four-room apartment in Kharkiv and a 0.22 hectare estate in Kyiv Oblast, including buildings with an area of 870 square meters, according to the government register. He has given the estate as a gift to a little-known woman, Nashi Hroshi
said.
In a video released by Nashi Hroshi, Shokin drives a 750,000-euro Mercedes Benz S600L car, businessman Oleksiy Tamrazov wrote on Facebook on Oct. 13. Investigative journalist Oleksa Shalaisky wrote on his blog then that the purchase of the car had not been officially registered.
“That means that some nice man allowed the prosecutor general to drive it,” Shalaisky argued. “Under the new law, that is corruption.”
Regarding the makeup of the commission to select an anti-corruption prosecutor with powers to investigate anyone, Jan Tombinski, the EU ambassador to Ukraine, issued a statement last month saying that civil society’s concerns were valid.
At that time activists accused Shokin of lying and misleading Poroshenko into saying that the EU had no complaints about the commission’s composition.
The commission for selecting the chief anti-corruption prosecutor comprises 11 people, including four chosen by the prosecutor general and seven by the Verkhovna Rada. It started working on Sept. 21.
One of commission members appointed by Shokin, First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk, has been accused of derailing reform at the Prosecutor General’s Office by attacking Sakvarelidze’s competitive hiring process for new prosecutors.
Another member, Yury Hryshchenko, the head of the office’s main investigative department, has been criticized because he was the boss of Volodymyr Shapakin, who was arrested in July in a sting operation organized by Sakvarelidze. Shapakin was subsequently charged with bribery.
The commission members delegated by the Petro Poroshenko Bloc have also been slammed by critics, who said they were not politically independent and had no experience in fighting corruption.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
