The Prosecutor General's Office is refusing to transfer some high-profile corruption cases to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Artem Sytnyk, head of the bureau, has said.
Nazar
Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, said on
March 12 he had reached an agreement on the transfer of the cases
with acting Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk. He said he expected the
issue to be resolved next week.
Critics
say the prosecutor’s office wants to keep the cases to cover up for
the officials involved, including allies of Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatsenyuk and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
The
Prosecutor General’s Office has hit back against such allegations in a statement made on March 10 which claimed that the current Criminal Procedural Code does not require it to transfer such cases.
But the
National Anti-Corruption Bureau maintains that it has the authority to request and acquire the cases, a right provided to it from the law on the establishment of the bureau.
In
a statement issued on March 11, Sytnyk urged the Prosecutor General’s
Office to stop blocking the transfer of investigations to the
National Anti-Corruption Bureau and start complying with the law.
The
bureau has requested about 10 cases from the prosecutor’s office but
prosecutors have not transferred them, Sytnyk said in a March 3
interview with Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, a weekly newspaper.
“Unfortunately, the Prosecutor General’s Office
keeps ignoring us,” he added.
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the
Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Post on March 12 that
prosecutors’ reluctance to transfer the cases was “linked to
their unwillingness to investigate them.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office has consistently
sabotaged these cases, and no progress on them has been made, she
said.
Burying the bureau with criminal cases
The
new approach of the Prosecutor General’s Office seems to be the exact
opposite of its previous position, according to Kaleniuk.
In
late 2015 the Prosecutor General’s Office said it wanted to transfer
about 2,500 corruption cases to the bureau in what critics see as an effort to swamp it with work
and make it dysfunctional.
Kaleniuk said the bureau would have no resources to investigate the cases and
would become a scapegoat if the cases failed.
Kaleniuk
also said she believed many of the 2,500 cases were “rubbish” that
would not prove anyone’s guilt.
The plan to swamp the bureau with such cases failed, however, when Ukrainian authorities passed a law in January allowing the Prosecutor General’s Office to keep investigating graft cases
that it opened, with the exception of those that the bureau decides
to request.
Mykola Martynenko
One of the cases that prosecutors are refusing to
transfer is against Mykola Martynenko, an ex-lawmaker from
Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party, Sytnyk said.
Daria Manzhura, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said by
phone that the case was linked to state-owned nuclear power firm
Energoatom. Critics say no progress whatsoever has been made on the
case since the Prosecutor General’s Office opened it in 2014.
Currently, alleged graft schemes linked to Martynenko
are being investigated by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office and
the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, as well as by Swiss, Austrian
and Czech authorities.
Martynenko is suspected of accepting 30 million Swiss
francs from Czech engineering firm Skoda for giving it a contract to
supply equipment to Energoatom.
He has also been accused of links to a uranium supply
scheme at Energoatom and a natural gas supply scheme at the Odesa
Port Plant.
Martynenko has repeatedly denied all the accusations and described them as part of a smear campaign against him.
Arsen Avakov
Sytnyk also said they were seeking to take a case
against Avakov from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Last July the Prosecutor General’s Office opened an
investigation into the supplies of backpacks produced by a firm
allegedly linked to Avakov’s family to the Interior Ministry.
In
January activists published video footage featuring Avakov’s son
Oleksandr that critics say proves his involvement in the supply
scheme.
Avakov
denies the accusations.
Illegal
amber production
Another case whose transfer the prosecutor’s office is
blocking, according to Sytnyk, is that against Oleh Nazaruk, a deputy head of the Security
Service of Ukraine’s Rivne Oblast branch.
He is accused of taking a bribe for illegal amber
production. Prosecutors have filed a notice of suspicion for Nazaruk
but it was subsequently canceled by a court.
The Prosecutor General’s Office claims that the National
Anti-Corruption Bureau has no right to request the case because
Nazaruk is not included in the category of officials who should be
investigated exclusively by the bureau. Prosecutors also allege that
the amount of the bribe is smaller than those the bureau is
supposed to investigate.
But Manzhura said the case could involve several
officials who must be investigated by the National Anti-Corruption
Bureau and the amounts of bribery could be much bigger. Under
Ukrainian law, the bureau has a right to request not only cases
against top officials involving large-scale corruption but also any
cases that it deems necessary for carrying out other corruption
investigations, Manzhura added.
One of the reasons why prosecutors are not willing to
transfer the amber production case is alleged evidence that it could
be linked to the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office and
the Interior Ministry, Kaleniuk said.
“The investigation led the prosecutor’s office to itself,” she said. “This is one of the reasons why they are not transferring it.”
The prosecutor’s office and the Interior Ministry did
not immediately reply to requests for comment on the amber scheme.
Parliament blocking anti-corruption moves
Another government body that is sabotaging
anti-corruption initiatives is the Verkhovna Rada, Sytnyk said.
Parliament ceased to be an ally of the bureau when it
received real graft-fighting tools, he said, adding that lawmakers
were afraid of being investigated.
For
instance, the Verkhovna Rada is blocking a bill aimed at making the
privatization of state companies more transparent, Sytnyk said.
He
said some lawmakers were allegedly planning to divvy up state assets “at a
discount” between themselves and promised to name them in the future.
He
said that lawmakers were also thwarting the introduction of
electronic property declarations for government officials.
Lawmakers
are afraid not only of criminal liability for incorrect declarations
but also of being punished for failing to explain the sources of
their wealth if they declare it, Sytnyk said.
Last month the Verkhovna Rada passed a bill introducing
electronic declarations but inserted numerous loopholes for corrupt
officials and postponed responsibility for fraudulent declarations
until next year.
The legislation has been harshly criticized by civil
society and EU officials and was one of the reasons for a delay in
switching to a visa-free regime with the EU. President Petro Poroshenko vetoed the bill on March 12 due to the criticism.
Kyiv Post staff
writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
