Checks of senior officials and civil servants in accordance with the law on lustration will start on Nov. 1, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said.
“Then (after the dismissal of 39 high-ranking officials) the government will issue a decree to approve a plan of inspections in accordance with the law on lustration,” he said opening a government meeting on Thursday.
“The prime minister, the first deputy prime minister, deputy prime ministers, ministers, heads of central executive agencies, which are not members of the Cabinet, the governor of the National Bank, the head of the CEC, members of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, chiefs of the Foreign Intelligence Service and the State Guard Department, the head of the presidential administration, the head of the Cabinet’s secretariat, members of national commissions will be first to fall under the inspections which will start on Nov. 1,” Yatsenyuk said.
The prime minister explained that the checks of these civil servants will be only the first stage of lustration.
He recalled that the main agency in charge of the checks will be the Justice Ministry, under which a relevant commission will be established. Such commissions will be set up at each ministry and they will study profiles and property of the candidates applying for a civil servant position as well as those who are already working in the civil service.
Yatseniuk said that the second group of officials who would fall under the checks would include the justice minister, his deputies, heads of the Interior Ministry, the State Fiscal Service, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and their relevant units, the judicial administration and its units, the prosecutor general and his deputies, as well as the officials of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
He added that the government expected to complete the inspections of the first and the second stage by January or February 2015.
The third stage of checks will apply to judges. This phase will start in December 2014 and will end in December 2015. The prime minister recalled that there were about 9,000 judges in Ukraine.
“The law on lustration will apply to all the professional judges, members of the High Council of Justice and members of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine,” he said.
After that, according to the head of government, from March until May 2015, the checks of first deputies and deputy ministers, heads of central executive agencies, which are not members of the Cabinet, first deputies and deputy heads of the National Bank of Ukraine, the Security Service, the presidential administration, the State Department of Affairs and officials at the Cabinet’s secretariat, including heads of district and regional prosecutor’s offices, military prosecutor’s offices, law enforcement agencies.
The third wave of inspections, which will be held from April 2015 until June 2016, will deal with officials of local branches of the Justice Ministry, local branches of the Interior Ministry and local branches of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine, all the agencies of the SBU, the judicial administration and district prosecutor’s offices.
The last stage (from September 2015 to December 2016) will involve checks of military officials of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations, except conscripts.
