Reformer of the week – Agiya Zagrebelska
President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 5 fired Agiya Zagrebelska, a member of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine.
Zagrebelska has been praised by anti-corruption activists as the most outspoken and independent member of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine.
She said she believed her dismissal to be illegal and that she would dispute it in court. Zelensky’s press service did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.
Zagrebelska has been a major obstacle to the adoption of decisions favored by top politicians, oligarchs and state monopolies.
Specifically, she has criticized the committee for stalling investigations against oligarchs Dmytro Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov.
She has also fought against UNL, a lottery monopoly that she says is controlled by Petro Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Oleksandr Tretyakov. Tretyakov denies being involved in the lottery business.
Anti-reformer of the week – Anatoly Kalyuzhnyak
Anatoly Kalyuzhnyak, a top official of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), is one of the most controversial appointments under President Volodymyr Zelensky.
SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlianska told the Slidsvto.info investigative journalism agency on June 28 that Kalyuzhnyak had been appointed as a deputy head of the SBU’s anti-corruption unit.
Since then, the SBU and Kalyuyzhnyak have failed to properly respond to major questions raised by media about him.
Journalist Yevhenia Motorevska on July 5 published a response to the Slidstvo.info investigative show by the SBU saying that the information on when Kalyuzhnyak was appointed and what his duties are is classified. The SBU also refused to specify whether Kalyuzhnyak had served in the Soviet Union’s KGB.
Kalyuzhnyak was a deputy head of the SBU’s anti-corruption unit in 2010 to 2013 and head of the SBU’s Inspectorate General in 2013 to 2014. He has no right to hold any state jobs under the 2014 lustration law, which applies to those who were heads and deputy heads of SBU units under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, according to Tetiana Kozachenko, a former head of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department.
Kalyuzhnyak claimed he is not subject to lustration because the Inspectorate General was not a “separate” unit of the SBU. However, even if that claim is correct, Kalyuzhnyak is still subject to lustration because he was a deputy head of the SBU’s anti-corruption unit.
Kalyuzhnyak also signed a Jan. 18, 2014 plan by the SBU to implement Yanukovych’s so-called “dictatorship laws”, which greatly cracked down on civil liberties, and counteract EuroMaidan protesters. Kalyuzhnyak admitted that his Inspectorate General had received the plan and submitted it to the leadership of the SBU. He said, however, that he had not taken part in drafting it.
The wealth of Kalyuzhnyak, who had not worked in the private sector before 2015, has also raised questions. His family own three apartments in a high-end Kyiv complex with an estimated total value of $500,000, a 250 square meter mansion in Kmelnitsky Oblast, an Audi Q8 car worth up to $200,000 and a Range Rover worth about $50,000, according to Slidtsvo.info.
Kalyuzhnyak said that all of his apartments had been declared, and state agencies had checked him and found no violations. The apartments were acquired before 2015.
