The Verkhovna Rada will consider dismissing Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka on March 5. The parliament is likely to approve it, David Arakhamia, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People faction, told journalists on March 4.
Parliament was initially expected to consider firing Riaboshapka on March 4, but eventually scheduled the vote on his dismissal for March 5.
Lawmakers from Zelensky’s party also previously considered firing Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, on March 4. However, it is still unclear whether a vote on Sytnyk will take place.
The potential dismissal of Riaboshapka and Sytnyk could lead to a confrontation with the West. Ambassadors of the G7 group of advanced economies have backed both men and opposed their dismissal.
Riaboshapka, Sytnyk, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Security Service of Ukraine Chief Ivan Bakanov and State Investigation Bureau Chief Iryna Venedyktova delivered reports on their performance to the Rada on March 4.
New prosecutor general?
Arakhamia said that Servant of the People lawmaker Serhiy Ionushas has significant support among his fellow party lawmakers as a potential replacement for Riaboshapka.
Ionushas, who used to be a lawyer for Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 studio, is a deputy chairman of the Rada’s law enforcement committee.
“Whether Ruslan Riaboshapka is dismissed or not depends on how the lawmakers vote,” Arakhamia said. “But the mood in parliament is such that it will be a maximum number of votes (against Riaboshapka). I will vote for his dismissal.”
Charges for Poroshenko
Arakhamia said that one of the major reasons for Riaboshapka’s planned dismissal is his reluctance to authorize a notice of suspicion for ex-President Petro Poroshenko.
Poroshenko is under investigation by the State Investigation Bureau and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau in more than a dozen cases. In late February, the Investigation Bureau drafted notices of suspicion for Poroshenko and passed them to Riaboshapka for signing. However, the notices were never signed.
According to the Kyiv Post’s sources inside the Prosecutor General’s Office, who weren’t authorized to speak to the press, Riaboshapka rejected the drafts because they were of poor quality and he thought that the cases would fail in court.
In one of the State Investigation Bureau cases, the Prosecutor General’s Office refused to authorize charges against Poroshenko for his allegedly illegal appointment of two members of the High Council of Justice in May. In April, the Kyiv Administrative District Court banned Poroshenko from appointing them because competition procedures had allegedly been violated.
Another case where Riaboshapka’s office reportedly refused to press charges alleges that Poroshenko abused his office by appointing a notorious official, Serhiy Semochko, to a position in the Intelligence Service that didn’t legally exist.
Vitaly Tytych, former coordinator of judicial watchdog Public Integrity Council, argued that Riaboshapka was reluctant to sign low-quality notices of suspicion due to potential accusations that the charges are politically motivated. He finds it bizarre, however, that Ukraine’s law enforcement failed to come up with properly drafted notices of suspicion for Poroshenko, who has been out of office for nearly 10 months.
Criticism of Riaboshapka and Sytnyk
Riaboshapka has also come under fire for allegedly sabotaging cases into the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, a lack of transparency in the vetting of prosecutors and the absence of meaningful progress in high-profile cases into the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016 and alleged obstruction of justice by prominent Judge Pavlo Vovk. Riaboshapka denies the accusations of wrongdoing.
In a separate development, lawmakers allied with oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky have led a campaign to oust Riaboshapka and Sytnyk and registered motions to have them dismissed.
Read also: Ukraine’s top anti-corruption official under fire from targets of his investigations
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau has been investigating an embezzlement case into PrivatBank, which was formerly owned by the tycoon, and Sytnyk believes the campaign to be a reprisal against him by Kolomoisky and Interior Minister Avakov. They deny that.
The Ukrainian government nationalized PrivatBank in 2016 after it was found to have an over $5.5-billion hole in its ledger. That money was allegedly extracted by Kolomoisky and his business partner Gennadiy Bogolyubov using fraudulent schemes. Kolomoisky denies the accusations of wrongdoing, and several parallel legal cases over the bank are currently ongoing in Ukrainian and London courts.
Kolomoisky’s allies in the Rada have also spearheaded an initiative to oust Sytnyk and registered a petition to have him fired. The ostensible reason is that a court found Sytnyk guilty of “receiving an unlawful benefit,” a misdemeanor, in September after an acquaintance testified that he paid some Hr 25,000 (today, roughly $1,000) for Sytnyk’s vacations in 2018 and 2019.
However, under Ukrainian law, a misdemeanor cannot be grounds for firing the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Verkhovna Rada members have considered submitting a bill to change the law so that Sytnyk could be fired.
