In addition to not solving high-profile criminal and corruption cases, Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin appears willing to sacrifice visa-free travel to the European Union for millions of Ukrainians by not carrying out graft-fighting commitments the government has made.
President Petro Poroshenko’s choice for top prosecutor has been reluctant
to do his part in establishing an independent graft-fighting agency by
appointing four questionable members to the selection board that will appoint
an anti-corruption prosecutor to the newly created bureau.
The EU has made the opening of borders conditional on Ukraine implementing
an anti-corruption action plan, among other measures that include
administrative reform. It has insisted that the new prosecution bodies be
independent and go after wrongdoing among dishonest officials.
Its displeasure with Shokin’s performance was voiced from within the Ukrainian
government. Particularly, in a letter dated Oct. 19 that the Foreign Ministry
wrote to the National Council on Reform urging Shokin to replace the four
members he appointed to the selection board.
Parliament gets to choose the remaining seven members.
The selection didn’t meet the professional and moral requirements of the
“cleanness” the EU had expected, said David Stulik, the EU’s spokesman in Kyiv.
“The expert community and civil society representatives have expressed their
valid concerns over the appointments done to the selection committee by the
prosecutor general,” EU Ambassador to Ukraine Jan Tombinski said on Facebook on
Sept. 21.
When reached by phone, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office declined
to comment on the matter.
Shokin, already under fire for allegedly shielding corrupt colleagues and
stalling important investigations, seemed to be in no mood to give in to the
demands. Ukrainska Pravda published a letter it says Shokin wrote to the
Foreign Ministry threatening legal action “for criminal acts intended at
undermining the authority of state institutions.”
The Foreign Ministry said it wouldn’t confirm or deny receiving the letter,
dated Oct. 21, from Shokin.
In the alleged letter, Shokin
argued that according to the law he could appoint panel members at his
discretion, leaving the Foreign Ministry and the EU without say.
Stulik rejected the argument as formalistic. “We had an oral argument with
the Ukrainian authorities on the integrity of the appointees,” he said. The EU
had also made its stand of the issue clear in earlier public statements.
Ukrainska Pravda also published a leaked
response from Tombinski, dated Oct. 22, calling for law changes further “strengthening independence safeguards for the selection process” of the lead anti-corruption prosecutor. The EU wouldn’t confirm
or deny writing the letter.
Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin downplayed the issue by
stating on Oct. 27 that the ministry “had no conflicts with the Prosecutor
General’s Office.”
Shokin followed suit, stating that the Foreign
Ministry didn’t have any issues with the Prosecutor General’s Office, not vice
versa.
The row is the latest skirmish in a battle being fought by Shokin to retain
influence over the nomination of the head of the proposed special
anti-corruption prosecution branch.
Volodymyr Fesenko, director at the Penta
Centre for Political Studies, told the Kyiv Post that Shokin was desperate to
have control over the anti-corruption prosecutor so to as to be able to protect
corrupt state officials from prosecution.
“The PGO are still acting like they’re the masters of
the country, misusing their old ‘general oversight’ powers to crack down on
everybody who stands in their way – just look at the threats in the letter,” Fesenko said.
Stulik confirmed that Shokin’s stubbornness not only risk scuppering
Ukraine’s efforts on the visa issue, but may also stall a much-needed €1.2
billion financial assistance package from the EU. “It’s up to Ukraine,” he
said.
The latest row involving Shokin is unlikely to cause the controversial
prosecutor general his job, according to Fesenko. He said it could be seen as a
sign of presidential weakness if Shokin was fired over the letter.
Moreover, Poroshenko still wants a controllable rather than an independent
prosecutor general, because the president is a cautious and conservative
reformer, who understands that corruption underpins the system of power in
Ukraine, Fesenko said.
“I don’t know any top politicians in Ukraine who would give up the PGO as an
instrument of power,” Fesenko told the Kyiv Post.
Meanwhile, 257 applications for the job of anti-corruption prosecutor will
undergo a comprehensive testing and vetting process. The panel making the final
selection, made up of the four Shokin appointees and seven people appointed by
parliament is to be formed by Dec. 1.
Artem Sytnik, the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau preparing cases for the future
anti-corruption prosecutor, earlier told the Kyiv Post that the agency would be the only law enforcement body in the country with
the power to detain suspects and their assets for up to 48 hours without a
court order. Featuring its own special forces, the bureau wouldn’t have to rely
on cooperation from other agencies to make swift arrests.
When fully staffed, the bureau will have at least 242
investigators who would search for discrepancies between government officials’
lifestyles and their reported earnings by correlating data from a range of
databases and other sources. It will be the first time official investigations
of this type are carried out in Ukraine.
The letter that the European Union allegedly send to the Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin including policy recommendations under the Visa Liberalization Action Plan. Page 3 reflects the EU’s demands for changes in the legislation.
The letter was published by the Ukrainska Pravda news website on Oct. 27.
Kyiv Post staff writer Johannes Wamberg Andersen can be reached at [email protected]
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych contributed to this report. He can be reached at [email protected]
