Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has ordered investigations into presidential candidates Anatoly Grytsenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, who are running against Lutsenko’s boss and choice for president, incumbent Petro Poroshenko.
Given Lutsenko’s history of using his powers to attack enemies and his overt loyalty to Poroshenko, who is running for re-election, the move has been viewed as an attempt to pressure the president’s rivals in the election race.
“It is hard to understand Lutsenko’s reasoning,” said lawyer Vitaly Tytych, member of the Public Integrity Council, a judiciary watchdog. “Nothing impeded him to investigate those cases earlier. Even if there were constituent elements of a crime, it would be better if the prosecution didn’t coincide with the time of the election campaign.”
He added that Lutsenko’s motion wouldn’t harm Grytsenko or Tymoshenko campaigns but he would still sue Lutsenko for interference into the election process if he were them.
“When anti-corruption activists point to the facts of corruption, Lutsenko doesn’t order (to investigate them,)” Serhii Leshchenko, a lawmaker with 135-seat Petro Poroshenko Bloc, said referring to the Lutsenko’s dismal record of failures to prosecute corrupt top officials or attacks, often deadly, on activists.
“The goal is to keep negative messages about the candidates (Grytsenko and Tymoshenko) circulating in media,” he added.
In the latest poll by Kyiv-based think tank Razumkov Center, Grytsenko ranked fourth while Poroshenko was second and Tymoshenko third. Since comedian and television producer Volodymyr Zelenskiy has taken a strong lead in polls, it appears that Poroshenko and Tymoshenko will have to compete for a place in the runoff against Zelenskiy.
Grytsenko’s alleged treason
On Feb. 20, Ivan Vinnyk, a lawmaker with Petro Poroshenko Bloc, confirmed that prosecutors had opened a criminal case into high treason against former defense ministers suspected of selling off Ukraine’s military equipment and undermining the country’s defense capacities.
Earlier, Lutsenko claimed that all former defense ministers and chiefs of general staff who were in office from 1991 to 2014 had been responsible for the decline of Ukraine’s defense capacity. Their actions qualify as high treason, he said.
That includes Grytsenko, who served as defense minister Tymoshenko’s government in 2005-2007.
Grytsenko called the accusations lies when asked about them by the Kyiv Post.
MP Leshchenko called the case politically motivated since Grytsenko and Lutsenko had a personal conflict earlier in February. In an interview, Grytsenko falsely claimed that Lutsenko’s son had avoided military service. Lutsenko published photos of his son, who had enlisted as a volunteer to fight in the Donbas war, and demanded apologies. Grytsenko only apologized to the son but not the father.
Vinnyk heads the special parliamentary commission convened to examine the embezzlement cases in the Armed Forces of Ukraine between 2004 and 2017.
At the commission’s meeting on Feb. 4, Lutsenko said that top defense and military officials for years sold off Ukraine’s weapons, ammunition, and military equipment, such as tanks and planes. It eventually led to the poor condition in which the Ukrainian Army had to face Russian-backed separatists when Kremlin waged the war in the eastern Donbas in 2014.
Three former defense ministers of fugitive ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s times — Mykhailo Ezhel, Pavlo Lebedyev, and Dmytro Salamatin — have already been given notices of suspicion of high treason and neglect of official duty. The three men live abroad outside of Ukraine. Ezhel was granted refugee status in Belarus. Lebedyev and Salamatin fled to Russia after 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
Their former boss Yanukovych, who was ousted from power by EuroMaidan protesters, was convicted of high treason in absentia in late January.
“Lutsenko had 2.5 years in office to investigate those hypothetical crimes that occurred over a decade ago. There’s no indication that he had gotten some new bombshell evidence now,” lawyer Tytych said.
Tymoshenko’s U.S. lobbyists
Batkivshchyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, also faces an official inquiry into illegal enrichment unless she explains who pays for her American lobbyists.
Last week, the independent watchdog Anti-Corruption Action Center (ANTAC) filed an official petition to Lutsenko after NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) had refused to launch proceedings into the sources of funding of U.S. political consultants that Tymoshenko denied having hired, yet whose services she has used.
Lutsenko ordered the anti-corruption prosecutors to verify the facts laid out by ANTAC. However, SAP has not registered the case yet, Olena Halushka, head of international relations at ANTAC said.
Tymoshenko retorted in a statement on Feb. 15: “I’d recommend Lutsenko to take my friendly advice and go on vacations for the time of the election campaign.”
“Otherwise, it’s an awkward situation: First, he passionately backs Poroshenko, then launches far-fetched cases against his main opponents,” she said.
Ethics
In Ukraine, the code of ethics prohibits the prosecutor general from endorsing or campaigning for any politician or engage in a political activity, said Volodymyr Petrakovskyi, manager for law enforcement reform group at the Reanimation Reform Package.
Nevertheless, Lutsenko attended the forum on Feb. 1 where Poroshenko announced his 2019 re-election bid and praised the president’s charity work and aid to the army in a January interview with Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon.
Former Prosecutor of Zaporizhia Oblast Oleksandr Shatsky filed a complaint to the disciplinary commission of prosecutors, which didn’t find anything unethical in Lutsenko’s participation in Poroshenko’s forum.
“Our experience shows that the disciplinary commission isn’t going to punish Lutsenko,” Halushka from ANTAC said.
Last February, the disciplinary commission closed proceedings into Lutsenko’s posts on social media, in which, according to complaints, he had leaked information about ongoing investigations and revealed identities of undercover agents.
“Back then, the commission decided that it can’t hold Lutsenko to account because he has to sign an order to impose a disciplinary sanction on himself based on the decision of the disciplinary commission of prosecutors,” Halushka explained.
By law, the commission can’t choose the penalty for the Prosecutor General. But it can appeal to the parliament with a proposal to dismiss him.
Last November, however, the parliament rejected Lutsenko’s resignation letter.
About a year ago, investigative journalists of the Schemes, a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, found that a company owned by Poroshenko’s entourage bought extraction rights at a natural gas field in Poltava for a price 10 times lower than its actual cost.
After the program aired on television, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine launched an investigation into abuse of power by officials of the State Agency for Geological Resources. In a follow-up story published on Feb. 15, journalists revealed that Lutsenko’s office had began its own inquiry and refused to pass the case materials to NABU, although investigating high level corruption in public office is in the purview of NABU.
Last year, Lutsenko obtained a court permission to access phone records of the Schemes’ chief editor Natalie Sedletska.
