Thousands of investigations into grand corruption committed under the reign of exiled former President Viktor Yanukovych are in danger of being transferred away from the prosecutors investigating them, if a procedural change is not enacted by Nov. 20.
If the deadline is missed, the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, would take on responsibility for more than 3,500 corruption cases from the era of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
When the law to set up the NABU was passed, the Prosecutor General’s Office was given only temporary authority to investigate corruption cases that fall under the jurisdiction of the NABU. That period of authority runs out on Nov. 20.
Prosecutors speculate that the move might be a battle in the ongoing war between the pro-presidential leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the independent NABU.
“This is an intentional act to flood the NABU with cases and to stop there being any results (in cases of) the former administration’s embezzlement,” said the Prosecutor General’s Office Special Investigations Department Chief Serhiy Gorbatyuk.
Gorbatyuk’s office is investigating the murders of more than 100 protestors during the 2014 EuroMaidan revolution, and has jurisdiction over grand corruption cases from the Yanukovych period. But absent any legislative change, their jurisdiction over the financial cases ends on Nov. 20.
Yanukovych cases
Prosecutors from the Special Investigations Department told the Kyiv Post that, due to a legal change, the unit’s corruption probes would indeed be transferred to the NABU on Nov. 20.
NABU’s press office confirmed the move in a statement saying that the transfer would “lead to the collapse of the work of the NABU and other pretrial investigative organs, and will paralyze the Ukrainian justice system.”
“Transferring such a quantity of cases to the NABU, which has a staff of around 200 detectives, will stop all current investigations by the bureau on top-corrupt officials,” the NABU added in its own statement issued on Nov. 15.
Gorbatyuk echoed that statement, saying that it would “interrupt the investigations and inundate the NABU.”
The legislation, in its unchanged format, will also deprive Gorbatyuk’s office of the ability to open new cases.
“The law forbids them from starting new investigations,” said Andrii Slyusar, a project manager at Transparency International-Ukraine. “Instead, that function will go to the State Investigations Bureau.”
Fraud or ineptitude?
Samopomich MP Olena Sotnyk submitted to parliament an amendment to the Code of Administrative Legal Proceedings of Ukraine in October to stop the transfer of the cases.
Sotnyk’s amendment was approved by the Rada, but she told the Kyiv Post that it had led to a bizarre scenario in which government officials may have altered the wording of the law at the last minute to allow the cases to be transferred.
“We don’t know what wording will be in the code,” Sotnyk said, adding that she did not know if Poroshenko had signed the law at all, or if it included the amendment as she had submitted it, and as it had been approved by the Rada.
According to Daria Kaleniuk, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, suspicions arose after “documents were sent by the Presidential Administration to ten ministers in Ukraine which showed that a certain clause was not included in the amendment.”
The law with Sotnyk’s amendment – No. 6232 – passed parliament on Oct. 3, and was sent to Poroshenko’s desk on Oct. 30 for signing. As of this publication, it is not clear if he signed it or which version of the law was signed.
Sotnyk said that the version that was voted on prevents the transfer of Gorbatyuk’s caseload.
“If my amendment wasn’t lost – if there was no fraud – it will mean that the new legislation will regulate this issue,” she said. “It will mean that the criminal investigations on Yanukovych, Azarov, and others will stay in the GPO until they are finalized and sent to court.”
