Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko, who was given the job of cleaning up a corrupt, politically subservient and ineffective institution employing 15,000 prosecutors, quit on Feb. 15.
In this farewell press conference, Kasko cited corruption and sabotage by General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin in combatting corruption and instituting the rule of law.
“The same political interference, direct and total pressure on investigators and prosecutors, intentional professional degradation, inaction and impunity hide behind the screen of an allegedly reformed body,” Kasko said. “The Prosecutor General’s Office is currently a dead body, and no one believes in its independence and efficiency anymore.”
Vladyslav Kutsenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, denied the accusations and questioned Kasko’s credentials as a reformer.
He dismissed his behavior as “public relations stunts” and accused him of refusing to work.
“Unfortunately Vitaly Kasko
paid more attention to meetings with representatives of mass media but work
must also be done,” Kutsenko said.
Kasko’s move follows other high-profile resignations by ministers and others who said they could no longer work because of top politicians’ attempts to obstruct their anti-corruption efforts.
While several ministers returned conditionally, Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius has quit for good — citing obstruction from a key presidential ally in parliament, Ihor Kononenko, who denies wrongdoing.
The developments come as Shokin, despite working for a year in one of the most corrupt and lawbreaking nations in Europe, has failed to submit a single high-profile criminal case to court.
Kasko said he resigned after Shokin deprived him of much of his authority. He said that Shokin had turned his office into a completely corrupt institution, with all attempts to change the system being derailed.
“The current leadership of the prosecutor’s office has once and
for all turned it into a body where corruption dominates, and corrupt schemes
are covered up,” he said in his letter of resignation. “…Ukrainians expected this
law enforcement agency to prosecute the Yanukovych regime’s corruption and
other crimes following the (2013-2014) Revolution of Dignity but it has turned into a tool
of political intimidation and profiteering once and for all.”
Kasko argued that he did not want to be part of a “body that creates and tolerates total lawlessness.”
“Ukraine is paying an
excessive price for cleansing itself from corrupt politicians and law
enforcement employees and cleptocrats who have united their efforts and have become
the nation’s main decision makers,” he said.
He said that more and more adherents of former Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka, an ally of ousted Ukrainian ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, are serving at the prosecutor’s office.
There is no chance left to create a European prosecutorial system under current leadership, Kasko argued. According to Kasko, a reform that envisaged recruiting new prosecutors in a transparent hiring process has failed due to Shokin’s efforts. The Prosecutor General’s Office has become an obstacle to law enforcement reform and foreign investment, a nest of corruption and a tool of political pressure, he said.
As many as 87 percent of top local prosecutors chosen by Shokin last year during the hiring process turned out to be incumbent top prosecutors and their deputies, and not a single person from outside the prosecutorial system was hired.
Moreover, rank-and-file prosecutors still lack independence, and the prosecutorial system remains Soviet, Kasko said.
The last straw that made Kasko resign was the sabotage by the Prosecutor General’s Office of bribery cases against top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniets and Volodymyr Shapakin.
They were arrested last July by investigators reporting to Kasko and Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze but subsequently released on bail.
Kasko said the Korniets case had been sent to court on Jan. 4.
In February prosecutors filed another notice of suspicion against Korniets, accusing him of extorting bribes from a company called Nikol San and then seizing the business.
In an effort to sabotage the case, Shokin on the same day deprived Kasko of authority to investigate the case, Kasko said.
He added that there were two more charges against Korniets coming up, including one considering the origin of the diamonds found in his house.
“I do not rule out that after my resignation these proceedings will be wrecked. The latest developments in the case against (Yanukovych ally Yury) Ivanyushchenko confirmed that (derailing investigations) is what the Prosecutor’s General Office does better than anything else,” he said.
Kyiv’s Solomyansky Court ordered the Prosecutor General’s Office last month to close an embezzlement case against Ivanyushchenko. The court argued that prosecutors had not taken any action to prove the suspect’s guilt.
Representatives of civil society and Western governments overwhelmingly described Kasko’s resignation as a setback for Ukrainian reforms.
Vitaly Shabunin, head of
the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s management board, said that Shokin was “happily
smiling because he’s gotten rid of the last person who resisted him at the
Prosecutor General’s Office.”
“For half a year, Poroshenko
has been more interested in controlling everyone through the Prosecutor General’s
Office than in Western funding and support by Europeans and Americans without which we will lose the war (in Donbas),” Shabunin told the Kyiv Post. “Shokin
is more important for him than all of this.”
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote on Facebook she was “begging” Ukraine’s international partners to pressure Poroshenko to have Shokin and Kononenko dismissed as “a
must-do condition prior to any further financial support of the
Ukrainian government.”
Kononenko, a top ally of Poroshenko, has been accused of corruption by Abromavicius, politicians and activists.
“One more intelligent reform-oriented professional quits the Ukrainian Mordor,” she said in a reference to an evil kingdom from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional universe. “…Every week now the best of the best Ukrainian professionals are quitting government positions due to obvious sabotage of reforms by the senior leadership of the country.”
Commenting on Kasko’s
decision, Daniel Bilak, managing
partner of law firm CMS Cameron McKenna’s Kyiv office, said that one of his clients had described the prosecutor’s
office as “the biggest mafia in the country.”
“No serious institutional changes
are taking place in the prosecutor’s office,” he told the Kyiv Post. “I don’t think any of my
clients notice any change in the way the prosecutor’s office works.”
He said that Poroshenko
would face “social unrest” unless he succumbed to public pressure and made the prosecutorial system independent and efficient.
“Any president feels that,
unless they have control over the prosecutor’s office, they don’t have a grip
on power,” Bilak said. “That’s a very bad way of governing.”
Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, shared Bilak’s sentiment. He tweeted that “Kasko was a champion for change within the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
“His resignation is a blow to Ukraine’s reform progress,” he said. “Ukraine deserves a clean judiciary. It will require top-to-bottom rule of law reform to address pervasive corruption and cronyism.”
Pyatt added, however, that the “U.S. would continue to assist those in the prosecutorial domain committed to operating under new rules.”
Kasko’s fellow reformer Sakvarelidze also praised him, describing him as someone who has “high moral principles” and a “real professional.”
“I’m very disappointed with today’s news of my colleague and comrade Vitaly Kasko’s resignation,” he wrote on Facebook. “… He has sincerely supported all steps aimed at building a modern, corruption-free and professional Ukrainian prosecutor’s office that will protect the interests of the Ukrainian people.”
Sakvarelidze said that Kasko’s resignation was a “major loss” but said he still hoped for “big changes and deep reforms in the system.”
Kyiv Post staff writers Oleg Sukhov and Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
