The Verkhovna Rada’s anti-corruption committee on June 6 recommended Volodymyr Vasylenko and Thomas Firestone as candidates for auditor of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center said they had been nominated in violation of procedure, as the committee did not vote on setting dates for interviews with them. The committee did not respond to a request for comment.
One of the two candidates could be appointed by the Rada as a NABU auditor on June 7.
A total of three NABU auditors must be appointed: one each by parliament, the Cabinet and the president. Since the leadership of the NABU can be fired as a result of an audit, President Petro Poroshenko has been accused of trying to install auditors loyal to him so that he can control the bureau and potentially fire NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk.
According to the Apostrof news site’s sources, Vasylenko is the government’s preferred candidate for NABU auditor. Vasylenko’s son is Andriy Vasylenko, a member of the pro-presidential High Qualification Commission.
Vasylenko, a human rights lawyer, has no relevant anti-corruption experience.
Vasylenko was nominated as an auditor by Radical Party Leader Oleh Lyashko, who is being investigated by the NABU in a corruption case. In 2015 Vasylenko was appointed to the constitutional commission by Poroshenko.
Firestone is the only current candidate to be an auditor of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine from parliament who could be independent of the Ukrainian authorities and who has relevant anti-corruption experience, according to anti-corruption groups.
Firestone has significant experience in U.S. pre-trial investigation bodies and the U.S. Attorney’s Office: he spent six years at the Eastern District of New York where he prosecuted organized crime cases, with a focus on corruption and money laundering related to Russian oligarchs.
Firestone, who worked with Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky – murdered while in prison in Russia in 2009 – is currently persona non grata in Russia. In 2012 the United States passed the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s murder.
He also served as the lead U.S. prosecutor in the extradition to Switzerland of Pavel Borodin, a Russian government official, to face charges of money laundering and embezzlement.
Firestone was recommended to the post of a NABU auditor by the U.S. Embassy and Transparency International Ukraine.
In May 2017 Mykhailo Buromensky, an alleged loyalist of the authorities, was appointed as a NABU auditor by the Cabinet of Ministers.
In February 2017, the pro-Poroshenko majority in parliament unsuccessfully tried to push through the Rada the appointment of another controversial loyalist, Briton Nigel Brown, as a NABU auditor, without the anti-corruption committee’s approval.
Then in July 2017 the pro-government majority in the Rada again unsuccessfully tried to appoint a protégé, Oleksandra Yanovska, as NABU auditor.
