The corruption case against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov must be investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the High Anti-Corruption Court ruled on Jan. 15.
The court ordered Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to consider a motion to transfer the Tatarov case from the Security Service of Ukraine to the NABU. The motion was filed by Maksym Mykytas, a former lawmaker and ex-president of state-owned construction firm Ukrbud.
Previously Venediktova’s office took the case away from the NABU and gave it to the Security Service of Ukraine, a more politically pliant body, in what her critics believe to be an effort to bury the Tatarov investigation.
Tatarov is under investigation in a case linked to Mykytas.
Mykytas has been charged with alleged embezzlement conducted through an Ukrbud housing development contract for Ukraine’s National Guard in 2016-2017. On Dec. 18, Tatarov, who used to serve as a lawyer for Ukrbud, was charged with bribing forensic expert Kostyantyn Dubonos on behalf of Mykytas to get false evaluation results that helped the company.
Tatarov denies the accusations.
Zelensky and his protege, Venediktova, have been accused of protecting Tatarov from prosecution ever since information on the investigation into him first surfaced on Dec. 1. Tatarov is among numerous influential suspects whose cases appear to be blocked by Venediktova’s office.
Earlier, Venediktova denied any wrongdoing. Zelensky said on Dec. 25 that Tatarov must prove his innocence, but added that he would only fire Tatarov if the deputy chief of staff was involved in corruption recently while working for him.
Transfer of the case
On Dec. 14, Serhiy Vovk, a discredited judge at Kyiv’s Pechersk Court, ordered Venedikova to transfer the case from the NABU to the Security Service of Ukraine, which is believed by civic watchdogs to be more politically dependent and less effective than the NABU. Venediktova’s deputy Oleksiy Symonenko used this as a pretext for giving the case to the SBU on Dec. 24.
The NABU and the special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office believe the transfer of the Tatarov case to be unlawful.
Under Ukrainian law, the Tatarov bribery case falls directly into NABU’s jurisdiction, and NABU cases cannot be considered by other law enforcement agencies. Disputes on NABU’s jurisdiction can only be considered by the High Anti-Corruption Court and cannot be heard by the Pechersk Court.
Serhiy Vovk is controversial because he was charged with issuing an unlawful ruling in a civil case in 2015 and was temporarily suspended. In 2012, he sentenced then opposition politician Yuriy Lutsenko to four years in jail in a graft case that has been recognized by European and Ukrainian authorities as politically motivated.
Sabotage of the case
The Tatarov case has faced continued sabotage by prosecutors and courts.
On Dec. 1, Venediktova replaced the group of prosecutors in the Tatarov case as they were preparing to bring charges against the deputy chief of staff and going to a court to apply for his arrest. As a result, the charges were blocked.
Later, the NABU opened a criminal case into what it believes to be Venediktova’s unlawful interference in the Tatarov case by replacing prosecutors in order to save him from prosecution.
Acting chief anti-corruption prosecutor Gryshchuk, who authorized the charges against Tatarov on Dec. 18, was removed by Venediktova from the group of prosecutors – something that anti-graft activists see as revenge on his stance on Tatarov. She also canceled the August decree on appointing him as the acting chief anti-corruption prosecutor and acting deputy prosecutor general, although he keeps heading the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office.
Meanwhile, the National Police on Dec. 29 charged Mykytas with kidnapping in what his lawyer believes to be an attempt to pressure the former lawmaker due to his testimony against Tatarov. Mykytas was arrested on kidnapping charges on Dec. 31.
Mykytas’ lawyers claim that the kidnapping case was fabricated to make him withdraw his testimony against Tatarov. The police denied the accusations.
One of the lawyers, Artur Gabriyelan, said on Dec. 30 that one of the alleged kidnappers, identified only as Chernov, had used two different phone numbers to write to himself to falsify correspondence with Mykytas. Chernov initially named the two different numbers “I” and “very important Serega” and later renamed “I” to “Maksym Mykytas”, according to the defense lawyers.
The defense published screenshots of the correspondence from the two phones with the name “I” and identical screenshots from the phones’ wastebasket with the name “Maksym Mykytas.”
