The Verkhovna Rada's anti-corruption committee on July 15 recommended firing Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and his deputies Volodymyr Huzyr and Yury Stolyarchuk.
The move came after deputy prosecutor generals Davit Sakvarelidze and Vitaly Kasko said at the meeting that top prosecutors were pressuring them to halt their crackdown on corruption.
They said that the Prosecutor General’s Office had opened two criminal cases against investigators reporting to them. Last week Sakvarelidze, Kasko and their investigators organized a sting operation in which two top prosecutors with some $500,000 in valuables were arrested on suspicion of bribery.
Petro Poroshenko Bloc lawmakers Mustafa Nayyem and Serhiy Leshchenko said on July 14 that Shokin, Huzyr and Stolyarchuk were behind the alleged pressure on Sakvarelidze and Kasko. Shokin denied the existence of criminal cases against investigators reporting to Sakvarelidze and Kasko on July 14 but Yury Butusov, chief editor of the censor.net.ua news site, published a document with instructions to open one of the criminal cases.
