Transparency International Ukraine may file civil cases on behalf of the Ukrainian people with regard to $40 billion allegedly stolen by Viktor Yanukovych, the group’s head has said.
“That’s something we are considering,” said Jose Ugaz, Transparency International’s global chairman, in an interview with the Kyiv Post on May 22.
Ugaz declined to provide details on what those filings would look like, but said that Ukraine’s failure to act on the Yanukovych case is “a scandal for the world.”
“It’s a shame for Ukraine that after so many years, and it being so obvious that this guy was involved in serious schemes of corruption, that nothing is happening,” he said.
Ugaz’s trip to Kyiv on May 22–23 for an anti-corruption workshop is his second visit to Ukraine since being elected chair of Transparency International in 2014.
On his last trip, the 57-year old Peruvian attorney met President Petro Poroshenko and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, both of whom told him at the time that there was “political will” to tackle corruption. Ugaz said he was dissatisfied with the lack of progress one year on from that meeting.
“In spite of the will of the good people of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, there is not only a lack of results, but also in recent times there are some messages to civil society that are not coherent with a positive will to fight corruption,” Ugaz said, citing a proposed law that would ban multiple law enforcement bodies from investigating the same crime.
Stolen cash
Transparency International has taken a more aggressive stand in recent years, filing its first civil action in Paris on behalf of the people of Equatorial Guinea to seize more than $106 million from the African country’s former vice president, Teodorin Obiang.
That case has established a framework within which it might be possible to file similar civil cases to recover the cash stolen by Yanukovych.
Getting to this point has taken a decade of legal drudgery, with courts initially rejecting the claims made against Obiang.
“The French court decided that (civil plaintiffs) were not entitled to submit a case because they were not victims,” said Transparency International’s Lucas Olo Fernandes of the initial result.
The allegations were eventually upheld, with activists relying on reasoning usually put forward by environmental protection groups, which had previously had success in arguing that even if they were not necessarily located in the countries where crimes were being committed, they could still be considered victims and represent the interests of victims in court.
Tip of the iceberg
Ugaz’s hints of possible future civil cases come in the wake of an April 20 ruling by a Ukrainian court that saw the return to Ukraine of $1.5 billion that was believed to have been stolen by associates of Yanukovych. Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s office did not provide details of the court decision, raising questions over whether proper procedures were followed in the case.
The Transparency International director said that the release of the funds, which were held at the state-owned Oschadbank before being returned to the Ukrainian Treasury, had essentially been botched.
“Any other country would be proud of the judicial decision, and this would be posted immediately to the open public,” he said.
During the Transparency International workshop where Ugaz spoke, Lutsenko did not answer a question from the Peruvian attorney about how many corruption cases there were into Yanukovych, instead saying that there was one treason case and that the rest would proceed “case-by-case” afterwards.
Ugaz called Yanukovych a “paradigm for grand corruption,” adding that he was amazed the former Ukrainian president “is not being investigated for corruption in this country.”
“People need to know that this is the money of the Ukrainian state, and that Yanukovych was able to take this and live this luxury life, spending the money of the Ukrainian people,” the Transparency director added.
Lutsenko also said that the Ukrainian government may begin to receive a total of $280 million in funds stolen by former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.
Lazarenko was arrested by U.S. authorities in 1999, making it nearly 20 years from when his crimes were committed to when the money is set to be returned.
Stolen goods
Exactly what happens to stolen funds that are recovered is a question now being hotly discussed in civil society. In countries such as Ukraine, where corruption is a systemic problem, returning money to the state from which it was stolen is not always a good option.
Such is the situation in the case of Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the late former Uzbek President Islam Karimov. She is accused of receiving over $850 million in bribes, partially through the misuse of state institutions.
Court proceedings against her are on-going in the United States, with activists optimistic that the cash will at some stage be recovered. That will raise the difficult question of how it should then be used.
“It would be highly problematic if the stolen assets were returned to the government of Uzbekistan,” said Kristian Lasslett of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
“It would, in effect, mean the stolen assets would be given to the organizational perpetrator of the original theft. It would also pose a substantial risk the returned assets would be re-stolen by criminal syndicates currently operating through the Uzbek state system.”
One model used to overcome this problem has been seen in Kazakhstan, where a foundation was set up in 2008 to distribute recovered assets by issuing grants to civil society organizations. Lasslett believes more such solutions are needed.
If not now, when?
In considering whether to file civil cases on behalf of Ukrainians afflicted by corruption, Transparency International would, in part, take on a role that many believe state organs should play. But Ugaz argued that small movements in the legal system could prove decisive in the long run.
“Everybody knows how this works and who is on the take,” said Ugaz. “This is when corruption normalizes, and it goes down to the common citizens, and then everybody is involved in a culture of corruption.”
“But, suddenly, something happens, and people start mobilizing,” he said, citing the 2013–2014 EuroMaidan Revolution as an example.
“If you ask me how this happens, I don’t know. When is this going to happen, I don’t know. But it happens,” he said.
