You're reading: Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk slammed over prosecutors

President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk are accused of keeping the nation’s prosecutorial service staffed with loyalists who are poorly paid. The combination ensures more corruption and less rule of law, critics said.

“If there are no new people, there will be no renewal,” Olena
Sotnyk, a lawmaker from the Samopomich party, told the Kyiv Post.
“They’ll just change the names but the essence will remain the same.”

The
reluctance of Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk to surrender political control
of the criminal justice system is becoming a major obstacle for Deputy
Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze, who wants to hire new
prosecutors, cut the current staff size and pay higher wages to attract
competent prosecutors.

Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko dismissed
the accusations, telling the Kyiv Post that wages had been increased for
some categories of prosecutors last month. He also blamed the Verkhovna
Rada for delaying major increases in prosecutors’ wages.

Kyiv Post+

Poroshenko
ally and lawmaker Oleksiy Mushak defended the president, saying
Poroshenko understands the need to overhaul the prosecutor’s service.

Sviatoslav
Tsegolko, a spokesman for Poroshenko, and Olga Lappo, a spokeswoman for
Yatsenyuk, said they could not immediately comment. Andriy Demartino, a
spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, was not available.

Along with corrupt judges and police, the nation’s prosecutors are blamed for Ukraine’s poor rule of law and endemic corruption. High-profile investigations or accusations against lawmakers or current and former top officials often go nowhere, even as enemies of those in power have ended up in prison.

Moreover, while estimating the corruption in the era of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych as high as $40 billion, no cases have gone to court against the ousted leader or his allies. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been accused of obstructing foreign investigations into suspected wrongdoing by powerful officials or ex-officials. The impunity extends to those who gave orders and shot some 100 EuroMaidan Revolution demonstrators.

All of this leaves prosecutors who are distrusted by most Ukrainians and seen as serving powerful, corrupt interests rather than justice.

Sakvarelidze, who is in charge of prosecutorial reform, has accused Yatsenyuk’s Cabinet of Ministers of sabotaging his work by cutting the wages of prosecutors. Sakvarelidze said the Cabinet has cut the payroll from Hr 2.5 billion to Hr 2.4 billion recently.

Instead of boosting wages with money saved by layoffs, Sakvarelidze said the Cabinet set wages for the heads of local prosecutors’ offices at only $116 (Hr 2,500) per month – a sure-fire recipe for encouraging bribe-taking.

“There is a miraculous Cabinet order that contradicts the prosecutorial law,” he said. “Everything we are doing now may just go to hell. I can’t imagine how one can survive on that wage. If the state doesn’t provide for bureaucracy, bureaucracy starts providing for itself.”

In addition, Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has the final say over who gets appointed as new prosecutors, according to Sotnyk and Vitaly Shabunin, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center.

More than 100 lawmakers seeking to oust Shokin accuse him of stalling major investigations and scuttling reform. Having him appoint rank-and-file prosecutors is an anathema to true reformers. Shokin has never responded to the accusations against him.

A presidential appointee, Shokin gets to appoint four of the seven commission members who select the heads of local prosecutorial offices. Parliament appoints the other three members.

Sotnyk wants independent civil society representatives to staff the commissions. Instead, the legislature chose lawmakers from the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkyvshchyna party.

“The presence of lawmakers on the commissions ensures political influence,” Sotnyk said. “The president has a majority in each commission.”

Shokin also chooses among the three candidates for each position nominated by a commission. “This gives Shokin not one but two ways to sabotage reform,” Shabunin told the Kyiv Post.

Sakvarelidze acknowledged the risks, but said that international monitors and civil society will be able to apply pressure and mitigate them. “There are problems, and there may be controversial decisions made by commission members appointed by the prosecutor general,” he said.

Shokin has also stipulated that new rank-and-file prosecutors should have prosecutorial experience.
Sotnyk said that this measure violated the law on prosecutorial reform and would ensure the preservation of old cadres at the prosecutor’s office.

Sakvarelidze noted that renewal would take place as a result of job openings emerging in the future, in which case people without prosecutorial experience will be eligible.

Making changes to regional prosecutors’ offices, scheduled for early 2016, is expected to be even harder because personnel at that level have more influence, according to Sakvarelidze.

“They have a history behind them and protection at the Prosecutor General’s Office,” he said.
Another obstacle is that Sakvarelidze’s reform office is small and understaffed. He said his General Inspection Service, which investigates prosecutors’ crimes, has few employees and cannot keep track of everything. He also said there was a lot of resistance within prosecutors’ ranks to the General Inspection Service.

Sakvarelidze confirmed reports that the criminal cases against investigators subordinate to him and Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko still exist. The cases were opened after Kasko, Sakvarelidze and their investigators arrested top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniyets and Volodymyr Shapakin on suspicion of bribery in July and were seen by critics as efforts by Shokin to cover up their alleged corruption.

“These cases will exist as long as there are people (at the prosecutor’s office) who have friendly relations with the people we arrested,” Sakvarelidze said.

Korniyets and Shapakin, who have been released on bail, often visit the prosecutor’s office and may even put pressure on investigators, Sakvarelidze said. Under the current rules, they can easily leave the country, he added.

Watchdogs appeared to have scored a victory when procedural oversight in cases against top officials was given to Sakvarelidze last month. But all high profile corruption cases had been transferred to other prosecutors just before Sakvarelidze was given the new powers, he said. In the upcoming months Sakvarelidze will be deprived of the new authority when cases against top officials are transferred to the chief anti-corruption prosecutor.