The Prosecutor General's Office has filed a notice of suspicion for ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko in a fraud case, Oleksiy Hrytsenko, leader of Kyiv's AutoMaidan car-based protest group, wrote on Facebook late on April 10.
He posted photos of Kasko receiving the notice.
The notice was brought by Dmytro Stus,
an investigator at the anti-corruption department supervised by
Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Stolyarchuk.
Sergii Leshchenko, a critical member of
the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko, has argued that the
department is effectively subordinated to the president and is
overseen by influential Poroshenko allies Ihor Kononenko and
Oleksandr Hranovsky.
Leshchenko, who was
present at the scene, said Kasko’s car had been smeared with an
unknown substance to prevent him from driving away.
Kasko is suspected of illegally receiving two apartments. Last month ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin obtained a court order to seize Kasko’s apartment as part of the case.
Kasko said then that prosecutors had opened five criminal cases against him. He argued that the cases were Shokin’s revenge for Kasko’s criticism of his boss.
Kasko resigned as a deputy prosecutor general in February, saying 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.”
He also said that all major investigations against top-level suspects are being obstructed — a charge that holds up, considering the 18,000-member office’s inability to try anybody for mass murder or massive financial corruption since the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Another reformer, Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze, was fired by Shokin last month after he accused his boss of corruption and obstructing reform.
Sakvarelidze was questioned by the prosecutor’s office for several hours on April 1 as part of an embezzlement case into the allocation of U.S. funds for prosecutorial reform.
Geoffrey R. Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, has denied the accusations, and critics believe the case to be a political vendetta by Shokin and current acting Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk against Sakvarelidze.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is also
investigating the Anti-Corruption Action Center, which has criticized Shokin and Sevruk, as part of the embezzlement case.
Most reformers subordinate to
Sakvarelidze have been fired or suspended, while some allies of
ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka
have been re-instated.
Read the Kyiv Post interview with Vitaly Kasko, published on Feb. 18, here.
