There’s a new face at Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office, but still that eerie feeling of déjà vu.
Yury Lutsenko, who was appointed prosecutor general on May 12, is the fourth person to head the Prosecutor General’s Office since the EuroMaidan Revolution. He has promised sweeping reform and punishment for disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies.
But his promises have immediately been met with skepticism, since Lutsenko’s three predecessors – Oleh Makhnitsky, Vitaly Yarema and Viktor Shokin – promised the same and yet utterly failed to deliver.
Only just over a year ago, during a pompous speech in parliament in February 2015, Shokin said his main task would be to complete criminal cases against the Yanukovych regime. A year later, the discredited Shokin was fired after failing to reform the prosecutor’s office or even send a single graft case against Yanukovych allies to court.
Lutsenko’s spokewoman Larysa Sargan said by phone that the prosecutor general wouldn’t comment on his first week on the job, but would offer comments to the press when he had something concrete to report.
The Kyiv Post looks into Lutsenko’s record to find out what can be expected from the new prosecutor general.
Revolutionary?
Thus far, the new prosecutor general seems to prefer that his reputation speak for him: Lutsenko and his supporters argue that his presumed revolutionary credentials prove that he genuinely intends to reform the Prosecutor General’s Office.
He was a leader of three major protest movements – the 2000-2001 Ukraine Without (President Leonid) Kuchma rallies, the 2004 Orange Revolution, and the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
But his opponents say he has lost his revolutionary fervor since then.
“Lutsenko stopped being a revolutionary a long time ago,” Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker from the President Petro Poroshenko Bloc, told the Kyiv Post. “Now he’s just a Ukrainian politician.”
Despite his pro-democracy views, Lutsenko and his parents were well-integrated into Ukraine’s post-Soviet elite.
Lutsenko’s father Vitaly was the head of the Communist Party’s Rivne Oblast Committee in the 1990s.
In 1991, Lutsenko joined the Socialist Party of Ukraine, an offshoot of the Communist Party. He quickly climbed the career ladder, serving as a deputy speaker of Rivne Oblast’s legislature in 1994-1995.
In the late 1990s, Lutsenko became a top Socialist Party official and a deputy science and technology minister under Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko.
Reformer?
Lutsenko also served as interior minister in 2005-2006 and 2007-2010.
His failure to reform the Interior Ministry casts doubt on his promises to overhaul the Prosecutor General’s Office, Lutsenko’s opponents say.
“His stint at the Interior Ministry was a big disappointment,” Leshchenko said. “He didn’t use his mandate to reform the Interior Ministry.”
In 2007 Lutsenko was accused of graft after a document was published according to which his ministry ordered services from a telecommunications firm co-owned by his wife Iryna Lutsenko. He denied the accusations.
Lutsenko has also come under fire for dragging his feet on firing Shokin’s controversial loyalists, including deputy prosecutor generals Yury Sevruk, Yury Stolyarchuk and Roman Hovda. They have been accused of blocking reform and investigations, and of fabricating political cases. They deny the accusations.
“He could have fired (the Shokin loyalists) in a second,” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, told the Kyiv Post. “If any of them remain in the system, it’s over. There will be PR stunts, but there will be no systemic changes.”
Another possible indicator of Lutsenko’s intentions is his statement on May 12 that he would not reinstate reformist ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze, who was fired in March. Critics say Lutsenko’s reluctance to re-hire Sakvarelidze could mean there is a lack of political will in the authorities for reform.
Lutsenko didn’t rush to reinstate the investigators that were fired after opening cases against top prosecutors, including the case of the notorious “diamond prosecutors” Oleksandr Korniyets and Volodymyr Shapakin – who were so dubbed because cut diamonds were found among their possessions when they were detained during an anti-corruption sting operation. Both have since been released on bail.
Korniyets’ successor as a deputy of Kyiv Oblast’s top prosecutor, Oleksandr Kolesnik, was arrested in a theft case by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau on May 18.
Moreover, Lutsenko was one of those pushing for legal clauses that gave Shokin a majority of members of commissions that recommended candidates for prosecutor jobs last year, which led to the failure of the agency’s reform, Shabunin and Olena Sotnyk, a lawmaker from the Samopomich party, told the Kyiv Post.
Yanukovych’s nemesis
Lutsenko’s supporters say that his experience as a political prisoner under Yanukovych implies he will not block cases against the former president and his allies.
After Yanukovych became president, Lutsenko was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to four years in jail on embezzlement and abuse of power charges – a ruling that was later recognized by a Ukrainian court as illegal and politically motivated. Lutsenko was pardoned and released in 2013.
Last week, Lutsenko promised to start trials in absentia for Yanukovych and his associates, and to dismiss prosecutors subject to the lustration law, which envisages firing Yanukovych-era officials. He hasn’t yet done anything in that direction since his appointment.
Poroshenko loyalist
Even if Lutsenko succeeds in punishing Yanukovych and his associates who have fled the country, that will not be enough for society.
“I think he’ll be focused on Yanukovych and his allies, instead of the incumbent authorities that the society demands investigating,” Leshchenko said.
Lutsenko indirectly confirmed this idea last week, when he spoke about the Yanukovych-era cases but said he had no authority to investigate incumbent top officials.
Critics say this is not true. Though the authority to investigate major graft cases against top officials has been transferred to the newly created National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Prosecutor General’s Office kept the corruption cases that it opened itself. The Prosecutor General’s Office also investigates non-corruption cases such as murders and kidnappings.
Another common critique is that Lutsenko, a long-time ally of Poroshenko and ex-leader of his parliamentary faction, will be unable to open investigations against his political allies.
“Will he be able to go against the people who made him prosecutor general?” Leshchenko asked.
Nor is he likely to go after controversial oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky or lawmakers from the People’s Will (Volya Narodu) faction, including Oles Dovgiy, Leshchenko said. The People’s Will and the Renaissance (Vidrodzhennya) faction, which is linked to Kolomoisky, voted for Lutsenko’s candidacy.
Leshchenko said he also doubted that Lutsenko would have political will to prosecute lawmaker Yury Boiko, whose arrest in an embezzlement case was blocked by Shokin.
A lawless appointment
Poroshenko was so keen to appoint his protégé Lutsenko, who has no law degree, that a special law abolishing the legal education requirement for the prosecutor general was passed with unprecedented speed on May 12.
Lutsenko’s opponents say that in most countries appointing a prosecutor general without a law degree would be unthinkable. Despite having no law degree, Lutsenko will have to take actions that require legal education – such as filing notices of suspicion or representing the state in court.
Critics say that major procedural violations during Lutsenko’s appointment make it illegitimate. The violations include submitting the bill abolishing the law degree requirement for voting several times during the same session, and rejecting alternative bills on prosecutorial reform, Sotnyk said.
“Could we imagine two years ago that in a country where people had a Maidan (revolution) against corruption, a prosecutor general would be appointed by forcing former allies to their knees, giving preferences to oligarchs, and ignoring society’s demands?” Mustafa Nayyem, a lawmaker from the Poroshenko Bloc, wrote on Facebook on May 12. n
