The Prosecutor General’s Office stepped up its pressure on key witnesses in the bribery case against “the diamond prosecutors” to protect the prosecutors after the Kyiv Post published a story on the issue late on April 14, Dmytro Boichuk, a lawyer for the witnesses, and ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze told the Kyiv Post on April 18.
Vladyslav Kutsenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, told the Kyiv Post on April 18 he did not possess information on the issue. Last week he said that Boichuk should file reports with law enforcement agencies if he believes prosecutors violated the law.
The witnesses, Andriy Huz and Yury Baranevych, co-own Gidroekoresurs and Chisty Grunt – companies that have a contract to clean up a river bed in Kyiv Oblast.
Two top prosecutors, Oleksandr Korniets and Volodymyr Shapakin, are accused of taking a Hr 3.15 million ($125,000) bribe from Huz last July. The officials, who investigated the business on suspicion of illegal sand production, are colloquially known as “the diamond prosecutors” due to the diamonds found in Korniyets’ house during searches in July.
The case is seen as a litmus test for the Ukrainian law enforcement system’s ability to cleanse its ranks and prosecute corruption.
A source close to the Prosecutor General’s Office told the Kyiv Post last week that then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, a loyalist of President Petro Poroshenko, said at a meeting with subordinates in July that the president had ordered him to destroy the business of Huz and Baranevych. The source said Poroshenko was actively siding with the diamond prosecutors.
Poroshenko’s spokesman Sviatoslav Tsegolko did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
Boichuk, the lawyer, said prosecutors and officials of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on April 15 started an examination of the companies’ production facilities in Kyiv Oblast for the first time since September.
Boichuk said the SBU’s actions were illegal because the law does not allow the agency to investigate the crimes of which the business is accused.
Olena Hitlianska, a spokeswoman for the SBU, did not reply to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, the police have blocked the companies’ equipment despite a lack of a court order on freezing it, he added.
“They’ve started tearing apart the witnesses in the case against the diamond prosecutors,” Sakvarelidze said. “Wherever it’s possible to physically pressure or scare someone or use administrative resources, they’re launching a full-frontal attack.”
He said that Shokin had given an order to “tear these guys apart.”
The current acting prosecutor general is a Shokin protégé, Yury Sevruk.
“This is an intentional reprisal to make sure that no one in Ukraine dares expose the corruption of prosecutors, employees of the Security Service of Ukraine and high-ranking officials,” Sakvarelidze added.
Sakvarelidze and Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, a lawmaker who informed Sakvarelidze about the alleged bribery in 2015, told the Kyiv Post that prosecutors had been illegally transforming the companies’ equipment into metal scrap and selling it online.
Another key official who supervised the case against Korniyets and Shapakin, ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko, was questioned by the Prosecutor General’s Office on April 18 in a criminal case into the sabotage of investigations of the murder of over 100 EuroMaidan protesters in 2014.
The move was ridiculed by critics since Kasko actively supported the EuroMaidan Revolution and was a lawyer for EuroMaidan demonstrators.
Prosecutors also called
Kasko in for questioning scheduled for April 21 in an abuse of power case.
Earlier this month the Prosecutor General’s Office served a notice of suspicion to Kasko and sought to arrest him in a fraud case, though a court refused to issue an arrest warrant on April 14.
Kasko is accused of illegally acquiring apartments
from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
After journalists asked the prosecutor’s office to
provide information on the apartments of other prosecutors to find out if
selective justice is involved, Sevruk said on April 18 that documents on them
had been lost.
Kasko said on April 18 that
prosecutors had opened a total of eight criminal cases against him.
Kasko and his supporters argue that the cases against him are fabricated and constitute revenge by Poroshenko, Shokin and Sevruk for his criticism of the prosecutor’s office and his stance on the diamond prosecutors.
Another critic of the
prosecutor’s office, Odesa Oblast Govenror Mikheil Saakashvili, also
became a target when Sevruk said on April 15 that a criminal case had
been opened against the regional administration over the allocation
of U.S. funds for prosecutorial reform.
One more move seen by
critics as a setback for the rule of law is the nomination by the Poroshenko
Bloc on April 18 of Yury Lutsenko, head of the bloc’s faction in parliament,
for prosecutor general.
Ivan Vinnyk, a lawmaker from
the bloc, said that the faction would propose Lutsenko, who lacks prosecutorial experience,
for the job.
The nomination runs
counter to Poroshenko’s earlier promise to appoint an independent and
professional prosecutor general.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
