You're reading: Opposition Bloc lawmakers push power grab investigation against Poroshenko, Groysman, Parubiy

The State Investigations Bureau has opened a probe into an alleged power grab by former President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy.

According to the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya (Mirror of the Week) news site, which first reported the investigation, the case concerns the absence of a legal coalition at the time of Groysman’s appointment.

The Kyiv Post could not reach Poroshenko, Groysman or Parubiy for comment.

Nestor Shufrych and Vasyl Nimchenko, two lawmakers from the Russia-friendly Opposition Bloc party, filed the appeal to open the case, Dzerkalo Tyzhnya reported. The Kyiv Post could not reach either lawmaker for comment by press time.

The State Investigations Bureau is a law enforcement agency that was launched in November to fight corruption among Ukraine’s top officials. It has not officially confirmed the existence of the investigation.

However, Anzhelika Ivanova, a spokesperson for the agency’s director, told the Kyiv Post that the State Investigations Bureau has several open cases against current and former top officials, but did not provide their names.

According to Ivanova, some of the investigations regard alleged abuse of authority. Some were also opened at the request of lawmakers. However, she declined to name the lawmakers.

However, there is also at least one official document confirming the case’s existence. According to a ruling of the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv discovered by the Ukrainska Pravda news site, on May 27, Nimchenko filed an appeal to the State Investigations Bureau together with another lawmaker, who is not named in the document.

The lawmakers asked the agency to add a case regarding alleged crimes committed by top state officials — the president, prime minister, and Verkhovna Rada speaker — to the unified register of pre-trial investigations.

The lawmakers accused these three officials of violating the 109th article of the Criminal Code, which criminalizes violent overthrow of the constitutional system, the seizure of state power, and conspiracy to commit such acts.

On June 7, the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv ruled that the State Investigations Bureau must start proceedings based upon the information provided by Nimchenko and the unnamed lawmaker.

According to Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, Nimchenko and Shufrych appealed to the bureau to investigate the top officials because of violations committed during Groysman’s appointment as prime minister. They claim that there was no coalition in the parliament at the time.

Groymasn was appointed prime minister in April 2016. In the Ukrainian political system, the parliamentary coalition proposes a candidate for prime minister to the president. The president then makes the nomination and the parliament votes on it.

However, in the two months leading up to Groysman’s appointment, the coalition in the Verkhovna Rada had collapsed after the Samopomich faction exited the coalition in February and the Radical Party soon followed in March. Since then, the parliament has been led by a two-party coalition of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and the People’s Front.

But the parliament has never published a list of the coalition’s members, leading to speculation that it actually does not have the necessary 226 lawmakers.

Shortly after his election as president, Volodymyr Zelensky dissolved the parliament, using the lack of a coalition as formal justification.

On June 20, the Constitutional Court ruled that Zelensky’s decision to dissolve parliament was constitutional. However, the judges did not state whether there was a lawful coalition.