You're reading: SBU Chief Fired After Flap With Poroshenko (VIDEO)

Ukraine’s Parliament on June 18 approved President Petro Poroshenko’s request to sack Valentyn Nalyvaichenko as head of the Security Service of Ukraine, amid growing recriminations over who is to blame for the government’s faltering drive against crime and corruption.

The SBU chief’s dismissal was favored by 248 out of the Rada’s 422 lawmakers, amid accusations by opposition lawmakers saying that a backdoor deal was reached involving horse-trading of key posts. SBU First Deputy Head Vasyl Hrytsak was later appointed as the agency’s acting chief.

The move followed a standoff between Nalyvaichenko and the Prosecutor General’s Office. The public dispute flared after Nalyvaichenko accused a former top prosecutor of covering up corruption allegations. Lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko, part of Poroshenko’s faction, in turn accused Nalyvaichenko of being a a protégé of tycoon Dmytro Firtash, an ally of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.

Firtash faces criminal racketeering charges in America, accusations that he denies. On April 30, he successfully fought extradition to the U.S. in a Vienna court while under a travel ban.

Nalyvaichenko also ran the spy agency from May 2006 to January 2010 under then-President Viktor Yushchenko, under whom Firtash’s business interests flourished.

Analysts also indicated that Poroshenko was unhappy with alleged corruption at the SBU.

Moreover, public criticism is growing over the administration’s failure to punish multibillion-dollar corruption of the deposed regime of ex-President Viktor Yanukovcyh.

The sacking was backed by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party.

Nalyvaichenko, a member of Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Kiltschko’s UDAR party, is likely to go into politics, Taras Berezovets, head of political consulting firm Berta Communications, said. “He will be positioned as a ‘European Putin’ – an intelligence officer with a European attitude and a strongman,” Berezovets said.

He may either become a competitor of Klitshko in their UDAR party, launch his own political project or head a political project linked to tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky and the Ukrop nationalist group in the Rada, Berezovets added.

Nalyvaichenko said he was ready to be fired. “The president has initiated my dismissal, and I must bite the bullet and leave,” he said on June 18.

On June 17, he attributed his sacking to the Kremlin’s alleged desire to get rid of him. He added that the Kremlin also wanted Yatsenyuk to be fired, citing information obtained by the SBU’s counterintelligence department.

He has denied links to Firtash, who with the Kremlin co-owned RosUkrEnergo, the former intermediary that supplied Russian natural gas to Ukraine. “All accusations that were made about any links to RosUkrEnergo and Firtash were refuted by me a long time ago, including on March 17, 2009 in Parliament,” Nalyvaichenko said.

Analysts attribute Poroshenko’s decision to sack Nalyvaichenko to his alleged ties with Firtash and his unhappiness with the SBU’s lack of success against corruption.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko enters the Prosecutor General’s Office on June 15 to be questioned over his allegations that ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Danylenko covered up alleged corruption at oil firm BRSM-Nafta, where a fired this month claimed six l

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko enters the Prosecutor General’s Office on June 15 to be questioned over his allegations that ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Danylenko covered up alleged corruption at oil firm BRSM-Nafta, where a fired this month claimed six lives. At President Petro Poroshenko’s request, Parliametn on June 18 voted to fire Nalyvaichenko as head of the Security Service of Ukraine, better known as SBU.

Moreover, the spy agency has been at the center of corruption scandals. Odesa’s new governor, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, wrote in a June 18 Facebook post that many SBU officials “run a protection racket for smuggling.” In March, ex-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Deputy Governor Hennady Korban also accused SBU officials of running a protection racket for smuggling of goods into Russian-occupied territory.

Leshchenko wrote on June 14 that the conflict between Poroshenko and Nalyvaichenko flared up after the SBU head fired top officials of the agency’s anti-corruption department without permission from the Presidential Administration. Berezovets said the officials were Poroshenko’s men.
SBU spokespeople Markian Lubkivsky and Olena Hitlianska were not available.

Meanwhile, Nalyvaichenko’s resignation also exposed similar problems at other law enforcement agencies – the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Interior Ministry. On June 15, he accused Anatoly Danylenko, a former deputy prosecutor general, of covering up alleged corruption at oil firm BRSM-Nafta and of co-owning the company. The accusations came amid a fire at a BRSM-Nafta oil depot where six people were killed.

Oleh Berezyuk, head of the Samopomich parliamentary faction, said on June 17 that Nalyvaichenko had provided information on the incompetence of other law enforcement agencies. The SBU had submitted data on major criminal investigations to other agencies, but no progress was made, Berezyuk added. “We consider the work of law enforcement agencies, including the Prosecutor General’s Office, the SBU and the Interior Ministry, as unsatisfactory,” Pavlo Kishkar, a member of the Samopomich faction, said at a news briefing on June 18.

Kishkar said that almost no cases against ex-Yanukovych allies had been sent to court. The SBU, prosecutors and the Interior Ministry have also faced criticism for failing to prevent the escape of Yanukovych ally and member of Parliament Serhiy Klyuyev earlier this month. Klyuyev was stripped of parliamentary immunity in an embezzlement case.

Another parliamentary group, Ukrop, did not support firing Nalyvaichenko. Ukrop lawmakers Boryslav Bereza and Borys Filatov told reporters on June 18 that Klitschko had agreed to support Nalyvaichenko’s dismissal in exchange for introducing single-round mayoral elections and getting his candidate appointed as the city’s top prosecutor.

Filatov said that single-round elections were also advantageous for Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy, whose Samopomich party also backed firing Nalyvaichenko.

According to a YouTube video of the June 18 Verkhovna Rada session, a man identified by Ukrainian media as Serhiy Vysotsky, a member of the People’s Front faction, texts blogger Karl Volokh on a smartphone: “(Lviv Mayor and Samopomich leader) Sadovy was given the position of the Lviv prosecutor and the Lviv customs office in exchange for Valentyn (Nalyvaichenko).”

Vysotsky was not available by phone or e-mail.

Exiled Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash is believed to be an ally of ex-Security Service of Ukraine chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko. (Ukrafoto)

Exiled Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash is believed to be an ally of ex-Security Service of Ukraine chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko.

Ukrop lawmakers also alleged that ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party had agreed to back the sacking in exchange for replacing Ecology and Natural Resources Minister Ihor Shevchenko with a minister loyal to Tymoshenko.

“This is not the Verkhovna Rada, it’s a bazaar,” Bereza wrote on Facebook. “This is being done in a classical Byzantine style.”

Kishkar and Leshchenko said they did not know anything about back-door deals. Oksana Zinovieva, Klitschko’s spokeswoman, was not available.

Nalyvaichenko’s dismissal was also not supported by the Opposition Bloc, the heir to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and the populist Radical Party, which has been accused of ties to Firtash and Serhiy Lyovochkin, Yanukovych’s former chief of staff. Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko denies these connections.

 

A man identified by Ukrainian media as Serhiy Vysotsky, a member of the People’s Front faction, texting a blogger that Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy would get control over the Lviv prosecutor’s office and the Lviv customs office in exchange for supporting Nalyvaichenko’s dismissal.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].