You're reading: As popularity falls, Yatsenyuk moves to rebut serious charges

With Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s approval rating down to the lowsingle digits amid an array of corruption allegations, he and his teamhave come out swinging with a list of comebacks to major charges leveledagainst him by critics.

Yatsenyuk’s allies distributed a six-page “fact sheet” this month to the diplomatic community and others in Kyiv to refute the major allegations. The fact that he felt compelled to take such a step points to a catastrophic loss of trust among the population, analysts said.

An examination of the “fact sheet” shows that many of Yatsenyuk’s arguments hold up when he talks about his accomplishments, experts say, but some of his rebuttals to allegations of wrongdoing are flimsy. The communication also does nothing to explain why the prime minister has failed to keep so many promises, according to some who read the “fact sheet.”

The prime minister also shows defensiveness and a disputable understanding of free speech by labeling every allegation against him as “libel.”

Yatsenyuk’s spokespeople, Olga Lappo and Danylo Lubkivsky, did not offer an explanation by the time this edition of the Kyiv Post went to press.

The document involves seven scandals in which the prime minister faced scrutiny.

Those include:

* accusations by Mykola Hordienko, former chief of the State Financial Inspection of Ukraine that the prime minister skimmed from the state budget;

* lawmaker Serhiy Kaplin’s claim that Yatsenyuk accepted a $3 million bribe; and

* the far-fetched accusations by Russian security services that he fought in the First Chechen War.

The gist of the document is that Yatsenyuk’s complicity has never been proven, in the case of Kaplin’s claims, or that whatever foul play occurred took place before Yatsenyuk became prime minister last year – the same argument that he made to counter allegations by Hordienko.

Vitaly Bala, head of the Situation Modeling Agency, told the Kyiv Post that Yatsenyuk should have already stepped down in light of his dismal approval rating.

“He should’ve left after his first 100 days, when his rating fell five times, which I think is a record,” Bala said. According to Bala, recent demands for his ouster are justified.

Society simply doesn’t understand “how the prime minister can carry out any reforms” if he has virtually no support, he said. “This is undoubtedly abnormal, and it shouldn’t be this way, in my opinion,” he said. “If there were some results, then things might be different. But when we see no results, and there is no trust … it’s not even that some reforms have been carried out badly, just that nothing is being done at all.”

As for allegations of corruption, Bala said that would be up to a court to decide. But “if such allegations keep being made, there probably is at least some grain of truth to it, something must be happening if we are constantly hearing about it,” he said.

Martynenko

In particular, one claim made by Yatsenyuk triggered an outcry from lawmakers and experts – namely that the prime minister has “no links” to the criminal proceedings against lawmaker Mykola Martynenko in Switzerland.

Martynenko, who is widely believed to handle finances for Yatsenyuk’s People’s front faction, faces accusations of large-scale bribery in a Swiss investigation opened in 2013. The allegations and even the existence of an investigation have been denied by Martynenko.

Yatsenyuk correctly notes that the investigation concerns events from before his time as prime minister.

But that is not the issue, according to Daryna Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center. Kaleniuk has “a lot of questions” about Martynenko, the current head of parliament’s energy committee.

“This person heads a parliamentary committee, and at the same time there is a criminal investigation against him in Switzerland. Businesses connected to Martynenko continue to work, continue to receive contracts for purchases from Energoatom, a state enterprise under the control of the government. And that, of course, concerns me,” Kaleniuk said.

She also disputed Yatsenyuk’s claim that “there were no appeals to the government from the law enforcement agencies on this particular issue,” noting that Swiss prosecutors had announced they had sought Ukraine’s help in the investigation nearly a year ago.

Anne Wegelin, a spokeswoman for Switzerland’s attorney general, told the Kyiv Post on Sept. 14 that Swiss prosecutors had earlier sent both Czech and the Ukrainian authorities “a request for legal assistance” on the matter.

“But there were no reactions or responses” from Ukraine, Kaleniuk said.

She noted that Yatsenyuk was using technicalities to prove his innocence in many matters, drawing the conclusion that the lack of proof of corruption means that it does not exist.

Looking at it that way, Kaleniuk said: “even Yanukovych was not guilty, because only a court can decide guilt. The question is actually a political one. Just because the General Prosecutor’s Office doesn’t uncover things, doesn’t mean that there is no corruption. If there is open public information, investigations in foreign countries … then that’s a good reason to start thinking about” whether this person should be trusted.

“The fact that the People’s Front isn’t taking part in local elections just confirms that Yatsenyuk’s rating is very low, and people don’t trust him. And the party didn’t want to openly show this” at the elections, she said.

Lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko also expressed indignation concerning Yatsenyuk’s argument over the Martynenko case, saying the prime minister was “pretending not to know anything about it” even despite the documented comments by Swiss prosecutors attesting to Martynenko’s role in an investigation, and their appeals to Ukrainian authorities.

Apart from corruption allegations, he said, Yatsenyuk had lost trust because he “hasn’t demonstrated any real reforms” and had only managed to raise tariffs and reduce budget spending.

Dirty energy sector

Alex Ryabchyn, a member of parliament with Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party and head of an energy subcommittee, is skeptical about the prime minister’s recent claims that the energy sector had been cleaned up.

In an interview with German media published on Oct. 19, Yatsenyuk praised Ukraine’s efforts in rooting out corruption – especially in the energy sector.

“Our energy sector was one of the most corrupt in the world. For many years, secret deals were made between the state monopolist Naftogaz and the Russian side. But now there are no intermediaries, and no profits from corruption,” Yatsenyuk was cited as saying by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Similar claims were made in the prime minister’s fact sheet.

But Ryabchyn said he “absolutely disagrees” with this assessment, and that the “energy sector, unfortunately, remains one of the most severely corrupt.”

While Ryabchyn said it was “a success that we’re using less gas from Russia,” he said plenty of corrupt schemes remained – they have just evaded detection.

The battle with oligarchs in the energy sector, he said, has resulted in illicit “financial streams simply being redirected” through different channels, rather than them being rooted out altogether.

“Parliament is doing a lot, but the realization of these draft laws comes up short, and much of the legislation just never gets anywhere,” he said.

Alleged $3 million bribe

Another corruption allegation that recently tainted Yatsenyuk’s image concerned the appointment of a general director at the Broadcasting, Radiocommunications & Television Concern.

Last month, lawmaker Sergiy Kaplin accused Yatsenyuk of accepting a $3 million bribe in 2014 to appoint Volodymyr Ischuk to the position.

Although Yatsenyuk denied the claim and said Kaplin was simply maneuvering to reinstall the former head of the company, the lawmaker has published documents purporting to show that Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court ordered prosecutors to look into the matter.

Calls to the court from the Kyiv Post went unanswered.

In the “fact sheet,” Yatsenyuk cites a statement issued by the BRT Concern to argue that the bribery accusations were not true.

The company’s statement blames the whole scandal on “a group of provocateurs from (ousted President) Viktor Yanukovych’s inner circle” – a theory that has become a favored argument for many politicians countering corruption allegations.

Yet even the prospect of a pro-Kremlin bogeyman does little to deflect attention from the fact that Yastenyuk cites the very same company he is accused of engaging in corruption with as the means to exonerate him.

Volodymyr Fesenko of the Penta Centre for Political Studies said such an argument is not very convincing, noting that most allegations of bribery end up hitting a dead end, as it’s nearly impossible to prove either way.

“To really prove this fact, you’d need a very solid paper trail and witnesses. So there’s almost never proof either way,” Fesenko said. “Yatsenyuk has already suffered a political loss, but it’s not connected just with the corruption allegations or suspicions, it’s also tied to the overall dissatisfaction with his government’s work.”

Of all the arguments made on Yatsenyuk’s list, the most believable is the one concerning Russian forces spreading outrageous lies about him.

Russia’s state-run media have sought to skewer him ever since he took office, for his hardline stance against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia’s Investigative Committee made its contempt of the prime minister clear with its mind-boggling claim in early September that Yatsenyuk had killed Russian soldiers in the Chechen War.

That claim is perhaps the only one on Yatsenyuk’s list that doesn’t require refutation. Yatsenyuk was in law school at the time of his supposed dalliances on the Chechen battlefield, according to his official biography.

Staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]