You're reading: Little support at parliament for prosecutor general’s dismissal

Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema was expected by many to be grilled relentlessly or maybe even fired following his report at the Verkhovna Rada on Feb. 6. But he got off easy.

Yarema, who has been blamed for lack of progress in high-profile investigations against former President Viktor Yanukovych and the ousted leader’s allies, was criticized by some lawmakers at the Rada.

However, most of the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkyvshchyna and the Opposition Bloc factions were against his dismissal. Yarema’s critics, mostly in the Samopomich faction and Radical Party, have so far failed to muster enough support for putting the issue on the agenda, let alone giving him the boot.

Yarema commented on major corruption cases and Yanukovych’s alleged role in ordering the murder of more than 100 demonstrators during the EuroMaidan Revolution.

He said that thousands of criminal cases, including 250 murder cases and 500 abuse of power cases, had been opened in connection with the killings. He added that 5,000 investigative procedures had been carried out and 3,000 people had been interrogated.

Eight criminal cases related to the investigation have been submitted to a court, Yarema said.

However, many lawmakers were unhappy with the slow pace of the investigations and the fact that no corruption cases against Yanukovuych-era officials had been submitted to courts.

Yegor Sobolev, a lawmaker on the Samopomich Party’s list, told reporters that 142 signatures in favor of putting Yarema’s dismissal on the agenda had been collected and that hopefully the issue could be considered next week. The minimum number of signatures required for putting the issue on the agenda is 150, while the number required for dismissing the prosecutor general is 226.

“I’m asking people with whom we were on Maidan (Nezalezhnosti during anti-Yanukovych protests). Soon there will be an anniversary of the EuroMaidan Revolution,” Sobolev said. “We don’t have a right to tell people that not a single person among those who organized this terror has been jailed, arrested or punished.”

Sobolev also said that the prosecutor general must not fear anyone, including the president and be a “man made of iron” who does not bow to pressure. “He must be afraid of only one thing – of betraying society and disobeying the law.”

During a Q&A session, Sobolev asked Yarema why several Yanukovych allies – former presidential chief of staff Serhiy Lyovochkin, former chief of staff Andrei Klyuev’s brother Serhiy and former Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boiko – had escaped justice and had even been elected to the parliament. He added that Party of Regions member Oleksandr Yefremov was at large in Kyiv. Yarema replied that no evidence for their alleged crimes had been presented.

Sobolev also asked why Yarema’s deputy Oleh Bachun had declared presents worth about six million hryvnias and why another deputy, Anatoly Danylenko, had three apartments, two houses and 1,500 hectares of land. Yarema dismissed this information as fictional.

Another question raised by Sobolev was why Kyiv Prosecutor Serhiy Yuldashev and Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor Nikolai Frantovsky, who are subject to the lustration law, had not been fired. Yarema said that they were being checked.

Another critic of Yarema in the Rada, Volodymyr Parasyuk, asked him why prosecutor Roman Voloshyn, who had been involved in criminal cases against EuroMaidan protesters, was still working. Yarema replied that, if Voloshyn’s presumed unlawful actions were confirmed, he would be fired in April under the lustration law.

Meanwhile, Yuriy Levchenko, a lawmaker who represents the nationalist Svoboda party, and Oleh Kuprienko of Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party criticized Yarema for failing to investigate voting fraud in the 2012 legislative election.

Other lawmakers were more lenient in their attitude to Yarema.

Anton Gerashchenko, a parliamentarian on the People’s Front’s list, told the Kyv Post that he had signed a motion to put Yarema’s dismissal on the agenda because “the prosecutor general must realize that the parliament controls his work.”

“The fact that the collection of signatures began doesn’t mean that he will be dismissed but the president and Verkhovna Rada demand that the prosecutor general fulfill his duties well,” he said.

He added that, if the issue was to be considered, his own vote would depend on his faction’s position.

Victoria Syumar of the People’s Front was also not in favor of immediately firing Yarema.

“We haven’t met with the prosecutor general but the factions that met with him said that his explanations were logical,” Syumar told reporters. “There is also the issue of compromise within the (government) coalition. If one faction supports someone, everyone should negotiate to preserve unity.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]