The President’s Office has drafted a bill that would prevent the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) from investigating top-level corruption, the Anti-Corruption Action Center said on Jan. 18, citing its sources.
This information was independently confirmed by Slovo i Dilo, a news site. The President’s Office’s press service couldn’t confirm it.
“Right now, the President’s Office does not have any information on the drafting of such a bill,” Iryna Pobedonostseva, head of the office’s public relations department, told the Kyiv Post. “We may have this information later. Lawyers are drafting many documents. In the initial stage, a document may be at the disposal of a small number of people involved in its preparation.”
NABU’s independence has been under assault by the administrations of both ex-President Petro Poroshenko and his successor Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Prosecutor General’s Office, led by Zelensky protégé Iryna Venediktova, has been trying to derail NABU’s bribery case against Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov.
Representatives of the Anti-Corruption Action Center believe that the president’s new bill is meant to help Tatarov escape prosecution at the cost of Ukraine’s ability to fight corruption.
“To save Tatarov, the President’s Office is preparing an urgent bill that would cease (Ukraine’s) partnership with the West by destroying the anti-corruption reform,” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote on Facebook.
The bill was allegedly created by Tatarov himself, Olena Shcherban, a legal expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Post, citing the watchdog’s sources.
NABU staff said they have a draft of the bill but didn’t share it with the public to protect their source.
Tatarov couldn’t be reached for comment. Earlier, he denied the bribery charges against him and accused the NABU of being under foreign influence.
According to a Kyiv Post source familiar with the leaked draft, representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office were involved in discussing the new bill. Venediktova’s press secretary didn’t reply to a request for comment by publication time.
NABU blocked
The new bill would allow the prosecutor general to take cases away from the NABU without a court ruling. Under current law, cases can only be taken away from the bureau by the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC).
The bill would also eliminate a clause that the NABU uses to investigate top officials. This would swamp the bureau with petty corruption cases and lead to top-level corruption investigations being taken away from the bureau, Shcherban said.
The new legislation also seeks to strip the bureau of the power to investigate money laundering cases.
The bill would furthermore prevent the NABU from independently cooperating with foreign law enforcement agencies. The bureau would have to request assistance through the Prosecutor General’s Office, which would be able to block such cooperation.
Clauses on HACC
The bill would stipulate that only cases investigated by the NABU could be tried by the HACC, Shcherban said. This will effectively prevent the HACC from resolving disputes concerning the court’s and the bureau’s jurisdiction.
The current law stipulates a specific number of articles that are within the HACC’s jurisdiction. This allows the court to assess which cases fall within its and NABU’s jurisdiction.
The new bill would also undermine the constitutional status of the HACC because limiting the court exclusively to NABU cases would help the argument that it is a “special court,” Shcherban said.
Special courts, such as courts martial, are banned by the Constitution – a measure intended to prevent summary justice. The HACC, however, is a specialized court, not a special one.
Currently the discredited Constitutional Court is considering recognizing the HACC as unconstitutional based on the argument that it is a special court.
Tatarov case
Tatarov, who is allegedly behind the new bill, is under investigation in a bribery case linked to the embezzlement case against ex-lawmaker Maksym Mykytas.
On Dec. 18, Tatarov was charged with bribing forensic expert Kostyantyn Dubonos on Mykytas’s behalf to get false evaluation results in the embezzlement case. Tatarov denies the accusations.
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 Venediktova’s interference. The bureau believes that this action was unlawful and was intended to save Tatarov from prosecution.
On Dec. 14, Serhiy Vovk, a discredited judge at Kyiv’s Pechersk Court, ordered Venedikova to take the case away from the NABU. Venediktova’s deputy Oleksiy Symonenko used this as a pretext to give the case to the Security Service of Ukraine 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.
Meanwhile, the National Police on Dec. 29 charged Mykytas with kidnapping. His lawyer believes that this is an attempt to pressure the former lawmaker due to his testimony against Tatarov. Mykytas was arrested on kidnapping charges on Dec. 31.
The HACC ruled on Jan. 15 that the Tatarov case must be investigated by the NABU and ordered Venediktova to consider a motion to transfer the investigation to the bureau. She has yet to make a decision.
