First Deputy Interior Minister Ekaterina Zguladze-Glucksmann, a Georgian-born reformer, has resigned, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov tweeted on May 11.
Zguladze will remain at the ministry as head of a group of advisors, however, he said. Avakov said the resignation was on Zguladze’s own initiative.
“Islands of success will drown in an ocean of corruption, nihilism and bureaucracy if we don’t build bridges between them and create a continent,” Zguladze, who did not elaborate on the reasons of her resignation, said in a statement. “If we are not strong enough to move towards the future, the door that we have just opened may be closed for a long time.”
Rumors about Zguladze’s impending resignation have been circulating for weeks. Some attributed it to her family problems, while others linked it to the law banning double citizenship for officials.
Sabotage by courts
Another version is that the move has something to do with the ongoing sabotage of efforts by Zguladze and National Police Chief Khatia Dekanoidze to cleanse the police from corrupt and dishonest officials. Critics say the police reform is effectively being killed similarly to the cleansing of the Prosecuror General’s Office last year.
Courts are currently re-instating many police officers fired by vetting commissions in recent months. As a result, the National Police had to suspend vetting in April before re-launching it on May 11.
Police officers have so far filed about 900 lawsuits in an effort to be re-instated, Mykola Grintsov, a deputy head of the National Police’s legal department, told the Kyiv Post.
About 16 police officers have been re-instated by courts, and lawsuits filed by about 15 officers have been rejected, he added.
Many of those re-instated are officers of economic and anti-graft departments, which are the ones most prone to corruption, he said. Courts have issued completely contradictory decisions in some cases and ruled in favor of officers who demonstrated their unprofessionalism during legal knowledge tests, Grintsov added.
Roman Sinitsyn, a former member of a police vetting commission, told the Kyiv Post that he “doesn’t see any point” in taking part in the reform anymore because it is being buried by the court system.
“It’s a pity I’ve lost a lot of time – four months,” said Sinitsyn, who is also a volunteer helping the Ukrainian army, adding that Dekanoidze was very disappointed. “They realized that there would be court cases but didn’t expect this to be such a large-scale phenomenon. Courts are just rubber-stamping identical rulings… Our courts are completely corrupt.”
Courts have even ruled to re-instate police officers who admitted committing crimes and being involved in corrupt schemes during polygraph tests, he said.
Sabotage by the Interior Ministry
The reform is also facing pressure from within the Interior Ministry.
Previously many vetting commissions were dominated by representatives of civil society.
But recently members of civil society left some vetting commissions, while controversial people and loyalists of the Interior Ministry joined them, Yevgenia Zakrevska, a member of a police vetting commission and a lawyer for killed EuroMaidan protesters, told the Kyiv Post.
Olga Khudetska, a prominent journalist and member of a vetting
commission, wrote on Facebook on May 11 she was leaving the commission
because imperfect legislation made efforts to reform the police
“meaningless.”
All commissions in five oblasts where vetting is under way now are dominated by the Interior Ministry’s “old guard” and are unlikely to fire corrupt officials, Zakrevska said.
Yaroslav Trakalo, a spokesman for the National Police, denied accusations of sabotage.
Zakrevska and Sinitsyn said the law should be changed to make it more difficult for courts to dispute vetting procedures and to reform the corrupt judicial system.
“The reform can be saved if Avakov is fired, if Dekanoidze gets real authority, and if necessary changes to the law are made to stop these endless reinstatements in courts,” Zakrevska said. “Trying to reach some deal with Avakov and the old guard is like playing cards with card sharps and attempting to win.”
Zakrevska has previously accused Avakov of derailing reform and depriving Dekanoidze of her authority. He denies the accusations.
Exodus of reformers
The ongoing reform of the Interior Ministry was initiated by Zguladze, an ex-interior minister of Georgia who was appointed as Ukraine’s first deputy interior minister in December 2014. She has overseen the replacement of Soviet traffic police with Western-style police patrols.
In April another Georgian-born reformer and head of the National Police’s security department, Grigory Grigalashvili, also resigned.
Now the department is headed by Yevgeny Koval, who is believed to be a representative of the old police system. He has been accused of corruption and persecuting EuroMaidan protesters, which he denies.
The Ukrainska Pravda news site reported on May 11, citing an anonymous source, that Dekanoidze could also be fired and demoted to an advisor.
Another event that cast doubt on the police reform is the beating of protesters who were trying to dismantle a Soviet monument in Lviv on May 9. Critics say the police’s actions were identical to the beating of demonstrators that triggered the EuroMaidan Revolution on Nov. 30, 2013.
Zguladze’s resignation follows that of other reformers, including ex-deputy prosecutor generals Vitaly Kasko and Davit Sakvarelidze and ex-Odesa Oblast deputy governors Maria Gaidar and Sasha Borovik. Other reformers who resigned or were fired are former Luhansk Oblast Governor Georgy Tuka, ex-Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, ex-Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, ex-Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarsky and ex-Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko.
Meanwhile, subordinates of Roman Nasirov, the controversial head of the State Fiscal Service, have signed a letter calling for the dismissal of Odesa Oblast Customs Chief Yulia Marushevska, who is reforming the region’s customs office.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
