The Prosecutor General’s Office in Ukraine works as a corrupt public business to earn money from opening and closing criminal cases to order, ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko, who quit the job on Feb. 15, said in an interview with the Kyiv Post.
“It was normal practice during (ex-Prosecutor General Viktor) Pshonka’s time,” Kasko said. “And unfortunately, we can observe a very similar situation during the time of (former prosecutor generals) Oleh Makhnitsky, Vitaliy Yarema and Viktor Shokin. Now, in my view, it’s even worse than before … The most widespread thing (for prosecutors) is to take one or other part in various business conflicts.”
Vladyslav Kutsenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, denied Kasko’s claims. He described Kasko’s actions as “public relations stunts” and accused him of “refusing to work.”
Despite the denials, the record speaks for itself – and in Kasko’s favor.
Leaders of the nation’s notoriously corrupt, politically subservient and inefficient law enforcement system have shown themselves incapable and unwilling to prosecute corruption, especially against high-level or powerful suspects.
The dismal record comes despite an abundance of resources: 140,000 police in the Interior Ministry, 27,000 law enforcement officers in the Security Service of Ukraine, 9,000 judges and up to 18,000 prosecutors nationally. (Kasko said he could never get a concrete number from the human resources division)
Moreover, the criminal justice system is further tainted by politically motivated and selective justice, supervised by prosecutors who have historically dictated verdicts to judges or threatened them with investigations for not going along with their demands.
The system has remained largely unchanged, not only since President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted on Feb. 22, 2014, but also throughout Ukraine’s nearly 25-year history as an independent nation.
Kasko, who was a top reformer at the prosecutor’s office since May 2014, looked exhausted after stepping down on Feb. 15, citing massive corruption at the prosecutor’s office, and Shokin’s efforts both to cover up for graft and to sabotage reform and investigations.
‘Too tired to stay on’
He told the Kyiv Post that he simply saw no point in working any longer as a cover for corruption.
“They could at least pretend they are changing something, but they don’t even pretend,” Kasko said of his former employer. “Unfortunately, I need to admit I did what I can do at the moment and I can no longer be a cover for what is going on in the office … I was trying to fight with the system, but I am too tired to stay on.”
He will return to private law practice and also serve as a legal expert for the Council of Europe.
Announcing his resignation, Kasko told a news conference that Shokin had transformed the prosecutorial system into a corrupt “dead body” that “creates and tolerates total lawlessness,” as well as making it “a tool of political intimidation and profiteering.”
The next day, following many months of public pressure on the prosecutor general, President Petro Poroshenko asked Shokin to step down. Yury Lutsenko, head of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s parliamentary faction, said on Feb. 17 that Shokin had submitted his resignation. However, officially, the prosecutor general has only taken a week off work.
Unwilling to investigate
One of the reasons Kasko quit is that Ukraine’s prosecutorial system is unwilling to investigate any high-profile cases, despite having full legal powers to do so, the former deputy prosecutor general said.
“In Ukraine, they are just using some minor cases to look as if they’re doing something, but the most serious cases are not investigated,” he said. “This is a standard approach for a Soviet-type prosecution service.”
He said that prosecutors were obsessed with formal “performance indicators, to demonstrate to society that they are doing something.”
“But if you take these indicators and compare what has been done in fact – it’s nothing,” Kasko added. “Only minor cases are investigated, and only minor offenders are tried.”
Last month Poroshenko claimed that the deadlock with criminal cases could be solved thanks to the law transferring investigative functions from the Prosecutor General’s Office to the yet-to-be-created State Investigation Bureau.
He has signed the law but the Prosecutor General’s Office still retains investigative functions, and it may take many months to set up the bureau.
Even if the bureau is finally created, the Prosecutor General’s Office will still oversee its investigations, and it will be impossible to launch criminal cases or take them to trial without prosecutors’ approval, Kasko said.
“The prosecutor is in charge of every criminal proceeding, leading the investigation from the very beginning to the end,” Kasko told the Kyiv Post. “That is why even if the prosecution service stops carrying out investigative functions, it doesn’t mean it will lose its powers. The prosecutor can do everything in the criminal procedure.”
Yanukovych allies
The failure of the investigations against Yanukovych and his allies, suspected of pilfering the nation of billions of dollars during his four-year rule, is a prime example. Yanukovych and some of his former officials are also implicated in the murders of more than 100 EuroMaidan Revolution demonstrators.
As of now, not a single corruption case against them has been sent to court and, if Kasko is right, they are not being investigated by prosecutors, who still oversee the investigative process.
One of the excuses used by the prosecutor’s office for not sending cases against some of the Yanukovych associates to court is that Interpol has refused to put them on its wanted list – a pre-condition for starting a trial in absentia.
But Kasko dismissed this as a false justification. The original version of the bill on trials in absentia did not include the provision under which suspects must be wanted by Interpol, he argued.
“Then someone at the Prosecutor General’s Office came up with the idea of adding this amendment about Interpol (to the bill),” he said, adding that inserting this clause “was a bad idea.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office has also argued that Interpol has refused to issue wanted notices because it does not understand the situation in Ukraine, and erroneously sees such cases as politically motivated.
But one reason for Interpol’s actions is that the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Interior Ministry have failed to properly investigate the cases and provide sufficient evidence to Interpol, Kasko said.
Moreover, in some cases, Interpol did issue wanted notices, and yet those cases were still never sent to court.
Unless investigators make some progress on these cases, the EU is likely to lift its sanctions on Yanukovych-era officials, Kasko said. The EU is scheduled to consider the issue in March.
“I do not see the determination of the investigative agencies and leadership of the prosecutor service to investigate these cases property,” Kasko said.
Korniets-Shapakin case
Another important investigation, the bribery cases against top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniets and Volodymyr Shapakin, has also been sabotaged, Kasko said. The two officials — the so-called “diamond prosecutors” because of valuable jewels found in a search of their offices — were arrested last July by investigators reporting to Kasko and Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze. But they were subsequently released on bail.
Kasko said that Shokin had consistently thwarted the case since its very beginning. Moreover, criminal cases have even been opened against the investigators who are assigned to the case.
The last straw was Shokin’s decision to deprive Kasko of oversight of the case. Kasko said the move followed the filing of a second notice of suspicion against Korniets earlier this month.
‘So sure of his impunity’
Apart from thwarting investigations, Shokin also emasculated the selection of new top local prosecutors in a transparent hiring process, and the vetting of rank-and-file prosecutors, Kasko said.
The reform flopped. As many as 87 percent of the 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.
Kasko said that Sakvarelidze, who was originally in charge of the reform, had proposed good ideas, but they never took off because of the obstacles created by Shokin.
Specifically, while Ukrainian law recognizes people without prosecutorial experience as eligible to become rank-and-file prosecutors, Shokin issued an order that banned them from getting a job at his office, Kasko said.
Moreover, Sakvarelidze offered a list of reformist candidates to staff the commissions selecting prosecutors, but Shokin rejected them and replaced them with his own candidates, Kasko said.
Among the nominees offered by the commissions for heads of local prosecutor’s offices, 3 percent were from outside the prosecutorial system, but “Shokin did not appoint a single one of them,” Kasko said.
“Shokin is so sure of his impunity and the president’s support, that he doesn’t even need to give any sign of carrying out reforms,” Kasko added. “They could at least pretend they were changing something. But they don’t even pretend.”
‘Evolution is too late’
Kasko believes that, contrary to Shokin’s idea of reform, “the system requires essential change – from the basement up.”
“They need some revolutionary steps at the moment. Evolution is too late to cure the system,” Kasko added.
He suggested sweeping out all incumbent prosecutors and creating international commissions to recruit new ones in truly transparent competitions.
“It should only be fresh blood that has access to these competitions,” Kasko said. “A lack of experience in the Ukrainian reality is even better than experience in the prosecution service. It’s really hard to find a prosecutor who has serious immunity to corruption.”
As a result, Ukraine will be able to “change the prosecution service from a Soviet-type hierarchical structure to a European type prosecution service, with independent prosecutors who don’t just do what their superiors say,” Kasko said.
But the president does not want to give up control over the prosecutor general, as it is a powerful political instrument, Kasko said, even though he believes many of his former colleagues would like to work honestly if they could while some viewed the service as merely their opportunity in life to make money.
Obstruction by Shokin
Just as with the recruitment of new prosecutors, Shokin derailed the creation of reformist units within the prosecutor’s office, according to Kasko.
Last September the Prosecutor General’s Office created a department in charge of cases against top officials, and Kasko became its head.
But Shokin derailed the department’s work by sending it “garbage” – cases that had nothing to do with top officials’ corruption as well as politicized cases, Kasko claimed.
“Although we were prevented from working properly, we managed to send several cases to court,” he said. “As soon as we started achieving results, the department was liquidated (in October).”
Last year, the Prosecutor General’s Office also set up the General Inspection Service, which is responsible for cases against prosecutors. Kasko and Sakvarelidze were put in charge of the unit.
But recently the General Inspection Service was de facto liquidated, and its investigators have been suspended, he added.
In any case, all investigations and evidence gathered against other prosecutors was accessible to all who worked there, Kasko said. “Everybody in the office could look through the proceedings,” he said.
New anti-graft bodies
Despite the failures, the authorities claim that they have gotten rid of the old system by creating new independent bodies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office.
However, Kasko is skeptical about this development as well.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau does not have enough resources, Kasko said, echoing the criticism of others who say it also does not have sufficient powers. The bureau, for instance, didn’t even have a prosecutor until recently and does not have wiretapping powers.
“They cannot wiretap suspects without the Security Service of Ukraine’s assistance,” he said. “Poroshenko has rejected the request. But how can you investigate properly cases like that without this?”
Kasko said he believes that “the prosecution service would have had enough resources to fight corruption if there had been a political will. But if there is no political will, then they can create lots of agencies, but in my view they will never succeed.”
