Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko said in a May 22 interview with the censor.net news site he would not fire top loyalists of his predecessor Viktor Shokin responsible for investigations.
The Shokin loyalists are accused of blocking high-profile criminal investigations, sabotaging a competitive hiring process for prosecutors and fabricating political cases. They deny the accusations.
Lutsenko’s opponents argue that this proves his unwillingness to reform the notoriously corrupt and inefficient prosecution service and to concede to civil society’s demands.
Lutsenko, who became prosecutor general on May 12, said that he “cannot lose time to meet the demands of society” because he needed to complete important investigations.
Shokin’s team stays
Specifically, Lutsenko was referring to Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Stolyarchuk, who is responsible for all investigations at the prosecutor’s office, and Yury Hryshchenko, head of the office’s investigative department. It was not clear if he was also referring to two other Shokin loyalists, deputy prosecutor generals Yury Sevruk and Roman Hovda, who also supervise investigations but have other functions as well.
Sevruk and Hovda have been lambasted for their links to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka, while Hryshchenko has been criticized for being the boss of prosecutor Volodymyr Shapakin, who was arrested on bribery charges last year.
“I could get a lot of likes if I fired everyone who faces enough complaints,” Lutsenko said. “But this will not be a professional step because replacing an official in charge of investigations would result in the loss of two or three months until his replacement will get acquainted with thousands of volumes of criminal cases.”
He said he would give the top prosecutors a 100-day deadline to send to court all major cases that can be submitted.
Lutsenko said, however, that he would reshuffle other departments of the prosecutor’s office this week. He did not elaborate.
“It’s a clear signal to the whole system that at this moment no decisive steps will be taken, that no purge will happen and that he will use the old cadres,” Mustafa Nayyem, a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, told the Kyiv Post. “Having entered the (prosecutor’s office), he sided with the old system that he had previously criticized himself.”
Lutsenko flip-flopped in his attitude to Shokin’s team after calling the Prosecutor General’s Office a “graveyard” before becoming prosecutor general.
Shokin’s loyalists played the main role in that “graveyard,” Nayyem said.
Nayyem also said that the top prosecutors responsible for sabotaging investigations, fabricating cases and corruption should be not only fired but also prosecuted.
Reformist ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko agreed with Nayyem’s assessment, saying that Lutsenko’s reluctance to fire Shokin’s team means that “obviously there is no will for reform.”
“Society expected radical changes from the new prosecutor general,” he told the Kyiv Post. “The fact that he’s giving a trial period to people who served Shokin and cracked down on investigators in charge of the case against the diamond prosecutors – it’s just outrageous for me.”
Shokin, Sevruk and Stolyarchuk have opened criminal cases into the investigators who were in charge of the bribery case against Volodymyr Shapakin and Oleksandr Korniyets, also known as the “diamond prosecutors” due to the diamonds found in Korniyets’ house. Shokin’s team fired and suspended most of these investigators in what critics see an effort to protect Korniyets and Shapakin.
Despite admitting that two years after the EuroMaidan Revolution not a single case against ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies is ready for submission to a court, Lutsenko is giving a trial period to “those who have been pulling society’s leg for two years,” Kasko added.
Another representative of the old prosecutorial system who is likely to stay is Anatoly Matios, a deputy of Lutsenko and the chief military prosecutor. Matios has been lambasted for previously working as a top official at Yanukovych’s administration and for his conflicts with volunteers helping the army and volunteer fighters.
Lutsenko praised his work, saying that the military prosecutor’s office was the only efficient prosecutorial department.
He also said he would transfer some corruption cases against Yanukovych allies to Volodymyr Zherbitsky, a deputy of Matios.
Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, wrote on Facebook on May 23 this would likely lead to the collapse of these cases.
Zherbitsky is linked to pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk and opened what critics believed to be political cases against politician Yulia Tymoshenko under President Leonid Kuchma, Leshchenko said.
Lutsenko has also been criticized for saying earlier in May that he would not re-hire reformist ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze.
Positive changes
On the upside, Lutsenko said he had approved the transfer of all corruption cases that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau had demanded.
Under Shokin and Sevruk, the Prosecutor General’s Office was involved in a bitter standoff with the bureau and was refusing to transfer some cases to it.
Lutsenko also sided with Serhiy Horbatiuk, head of the department for trials in absentia at the Prosecutor General’s Office, in his conflict with Shokin’s team.
Horbatiuk, who has been praised by civil society for his efforts to investigate the murder of more than 100 EuroMaidan protesters, says that Stolyarchuk and other Shokin loyalists have been blocking his work and putting pressure on his department.
Lutsenko said he had decided to liquidate the department that had interrogated investigators of Horbatiuk’s department and had been accused of pressuring them. Lutsenko added that Horbatiuk would cease to report to Stolyarchuk and would be subordinate directly to the prosecutor general.
In another concession to civil society, Lutsenko said he would replace the leadership of the notorious anti-corruption department accused of fabricating political cases, including those against Kasko and Sakvarelidze. The deparment is headed by Volodymyr Hutsulyak and Dmytro Sus, who report to Stolyarchuk.
Leshchenko has accused Poroshenko’s key allies Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky of effectively running the department, although they deny it. They have reportedly frequented top-level meetings at the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Lutsenko said that he would not allow any politicians to attend meetings at the prosecutor’s office.
Kasko was skeptical about the measures. “It would be a right thing to create a completely new structure of the prosecution service,” he said. “Without this, these half-steps will be just patches for the system.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
