You're reading: Transparency International says Shokin to blame for failed anti-corruption efforts

The Ukrainian branch of Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, said in a statement on Nov. 2 that the country’s leadership and Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin were trying to turn anti-corruption bodies into their “puppets.”

The devastating critique comes amid a drive in the Verkhovna Rada to oust Shokin and mounting accusations that he is sabotaging all high-profile criminal cases.

Critics of Shokin’s performance include Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry; Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and Jan Tombinski, the European Union’s ambassador.

Andriy Demartino, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, declined to comment.

“Transparency International Ukraine believes that Prosecutor General Shokin is personally responsible for the failure of the fight against high-ranking officials’ corruption,” Transparency International said.

The watchdog said that Ukraine’s leadership “is trying to establish control over key anti-corruption bodies in order to make them work in their own interests.”

“Thus officials deprive Ukraine of a future without corruption and citizens of the opportunity to travel to Europe visa-free,” the organization said, referring to Shokin’s failure to comply with E.U. requirements for introducing a visa-free regime. “With the obvious approval of the country’s leadership, Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin is trying to make the newly-created anti-corruption prosecutor’s office as dependent as possible.”

Transparency International also said that “Shokin’s attempts to create a rubber-stamp anti-corruption body prove that he doesn’t want to carry out any reforms either at the prosecutor’s office or in anti-corruption efforts.”

The organization said a smear campaign had been launched against Transparency International and Ukrainian law firm Arzinger, where reformist Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko had previously worked. Transparency International attributed the campaign to “corrupt top officials’ desire to turn new anti-corruption institutions into tame monkeys.”

Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, told the Kyiv Post that representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office delegated by Shokin to the commission for choosing the anti-corruption prosecutor had been trying to block Kasko from becoming a candidate. Shabunin is a member of the commission.

Shokin’s choice of four controversial people for the commission has been criticized by lawmakers, civic activists and the E.U.

One of them, First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk, has been accused of sabotaging reform at the Prosecutor General’s Office. Another member – Yury Hryshchenko, head of the office’s main investigative department – has been lambasted because he was the boss of prosecutor Volodymyr Shapakin, who was arrested in a bribery case in July.

According to the Yevropeiska Pravda newspaper, Shokin has ignored demands by the E.U. and Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry to replace his members of the commission with independent representatives of civil society. Moreover, he has started a war on the Foreign Ministry by initiating a check of the legality of its demands, the newspaper said.

Critics also say that Poroshenko has attempted to reduce prosecutors’ independence by passing a law that gives the president and the pro-presidential majority in parliament the power to appoint members of the commission for choosing the anti-corruption prosecutor.

In an apparent effort to respond to the mounting criticism of his work, Shokin held a news briefing on Nov. 2 jointly with Vasyl Hrytsak, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, to talk about high-profile criminal investigations.

Specifically, Shokin and Hrytsak presented evidence against Hennady Korban, an ally of tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky who was arrested on Oct. 31 on organized crime, embezzlement, kidnapping and hijacking charges.

Shokin and Hrytsak also showed a video in which Radical Party lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk, who was arrested in September on bribery charges, admits during an interrogation that he took a bribe. Mosiychuk subsequently claimed he had confessed under torture.

Critics see the arrests of Korban and Mosiychuk – both opponents of President Petro Poroshenko – as examples of politically motivated selective justice. Currently, no high-ranking ex-allies of disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych or allies of Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk are behind bars, despite increasing evidence of wrongdoing.

When asked why only Poroshenko’s opponents were under arrest, Shokin urged the Kyiv Post to present evidence of other politicians’ crimes to him.

Shokin said at the briefing that employees of the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office had tried to serve summons to Oleksandr Vilkul, Natalya Korolevska and Vadym Novynsky – ex-allies of Yanukovych – in the Verkhovna Rada on Nov. 2 but they were not in the building.

He said that Korolevska and Vilkul were expected to be questioned on Nov. 5. Shokin added that he could ask the Verkhona Rada to strip lawmakers from the Opposition Bloc, an offshoot of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and other parties of parliamentary immunity if there is enough evidence of their crimes.

The Interior Ministry said Novynsky had agreed to be interrogated. According to media reports, Vilkul is currently abroad, while Korolevska said she was in Kyiv and denied getting a summons.

Shabunin said he doubted that the cases against Vilkul, Novynsky and Korolevska would lead to their arrests.

“If they had wanted to detain them, they would have acted in the same manner as when they arrested Mosiychuk and Korban,” he said. “This means that their goal was not to detain (the ex-Yanukovych allies) but to stage a PR stunt in an effort to reduce the resentment over the absence of ex-Party of Regions members (behind bars).”

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