Trust is waning in Yuriy Lutsenko’s performance as prosecutor general because he has failed to fire prosecutors accused of corruption or bring any major corruption cases to trial since taking over in May.
All the while, Lutsenko continues to display political subservience to President Petro Poroshenko, who appointed him, and the president’s controversial allies. Even Lutsenko’s focus – creation of a new Inspectorate General to investigate prosecutorial corruption vice – is being panned.
Critics say that the new Inspectorate General will not have any significant powers. They dismiss it as a public relations stunt. The authorities have emasculated the current Inspectorate General by expelling reformers and blocking criminal cases, critics argue.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office should be cleansed starting from the top. But they’re not doing that. Instead, Lutsenko is saying that there are no demons or angels at the prosecution service,” Vitaly Kasko, an ex-deputy prosecutor general who now works at Transparency International, told the Kyiv Post.
The view that the prosecution service is unreformable and needs to be replaced with a completely new institution has been gaining ground for years. However, some are still trying to salvage the current institution.
Bohdan Vitvitsky, an ex-U.S. prosecutor, is the latest one. Vitvitsky’s task is create a new Inspectorate General. He dismissed criticism of the prosecution service, saying reform was a challenge, but possible. “If I didn’t believe things could be changed, I wouldn’t be here,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Inspectorate General
In August, a competition began for jobs at a new Inspectorate General to replace the current discredited one.
“It’s something similar to the U.S. system of inspectors general,” Vitvitsky said. “The Inspectorate General will be expected to monitor and root out corruption within the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
Lutsenko has created a commission to select the inspectorate. Three members – Angela Strizhevska, Maxim Kutergan and Valentyna Telychenko – are seen as representing the interests of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Another member from the Security Service of Ukraine may also be appointed.
Two members – Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, head of Transparency International Ukraine and Yury Belousov from the Human Rights non-governmental group – represent civil society, and one –Vitvitsky – is a foreigner.
Kasko argued that it would be easy for a majority loyal to the Prosecutor General’s Office to push for their candidates. “Most members are under control,” he told the Kyiv Post. “They will appoint whoever they are told to appoint.”
Lutsenko also invited Vitvitsky in an effort to create an imposing façade and legitimize it, he said, adding that the Prosecutor General’s Office might try to mislead him in an effort to choose loyal candidates.
Kasko also believes that creating the new Inspectorate General “doesn’t make any sense other than PR.”
Kasko said the inspectorate will not be able to investigate major corruption cases because it is an exclusive function of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, while smaller graft cases and non-corruption cases will soon be transferred to the yet-to-be-launched State Investigation Bureau.
The only meaningful function that the Inspectorate General may have is internal security, including checks on prosecutors’ declarations, he said.
Botched attempt
The current Inspectorate General was created last year by then-Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze, who was charged with reforming the prosecution service. Last July his team arrested top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniyets and Volodymyr Shapakin, reportedly protégés of then Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, in a bribery case.
However, Sakvarelidze told the Kyiv Post his efforts had been blocked by Shokin, who Poroshenko fired under pressure in March, and by his protégé Maxim Melnychenko, who now heads the Inspectorate General and is subject to dismissal under the lustration law on firing top officials who served ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
“Shokin was doing his best to strangle it,” Sakvarelidze said. “As soon as he felt this could reduce corruption risks, he did his best to make sure the Inspectorate General doesn’t work.”
Shokin fired Sakvarelidze in March. Kasko and ex-Security Service of Ukraine Deputy Head Viktor Trepak, who also participated in the arrest of Korniyets and Shapakin, have also been forced out.
Members of Sakvarelidze’s team were suspended in February as part of what his sees as revenge for their anti-corruption drive. Some of them were reinstated by Lutsenko but became “outcasts” and were prevented from prosecuting corruption, Sakvarelidze argues.
“These guys have been sitting idle for months,” he said. “They were completely paralyzed… There’s no political will to make this service work.”
Sakvarelidze and Kasko said that, after their ouster from the prosecution service, the Inspectorate General had failed to take several other cases against Korniyets and Shapakin to court or to initiate any new graft cases.
Other aspects
Another move that Lutsenko has touted as reform is his appointment in May of Petro Shkutyak to head a unit checking prosecutors’ asset declarations for signs of corruption.
The Prosecutor General’s Office told the Kyiv Post that the unit had found untrustworthy information in 94 prosecutors’ declarations. The office failed to explain, however, whether anyone had been fired or prosecuted.
“It still remains a PR stunt,” Yurchyshyn told the Kyiv Post. “Unfortunately these declaration (checks) have not shown any efficiency.”
Moreover, Shkutyak has no right to hold state jobs under the lustration law.
As part of reform efforts, a competition was held last year for top local prosecutors’ jobs but it failed miserably, with almost all of the jobs going to incumbents due to obstruction by Shokin, Sakvarelidze said. Sakvarelidze was also planning to organize competitions for top oblast prosecutors and top brass at the Prosecutor General’s Office but these plans were derailed after his ouster.
Lutsenko has so far failed to specify whether and when such competitions will be held.
Grey cardinals
One litmus test for Lutsenko’s willingness to reform came in August, when employees of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine said they had been tortured by a prosecutorial unit headed by Volodymyr Hutsulyak and Dmytro Sus.
The unit has been accused of fabricating political cases on behalf of Poroshenko’s grey cardinals, Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky. The prosecutors denied the accusations, saying that they were beaten by bureau agents.
Lutsenko has resisted demands to fire Sus and Hutsulyak, prompting accusations that he is dependent on Hranovsky and Kononenko.
Lutsenko also triggered a scandal on Sept. 5 by taking Hranovksy with him on a visit to Cyprus and appointing Oleh Valendyuk, a Hranovsky ally subject to lustration, as a deputy chief prosecutor of Crimea.
‘Limited role’
“I was also asked to participate to get to the bottom of what happened that day,” Vitvitsky said. “Was anybody tortured or is that a misrepresentation? It’s a he said/she said kind of situation.”
Commenting on accusations that Lutsenko keeps controversial prosecutors and is influenced by Poroshenko’s grey cardinals, Vitvitsky said he had a “comparatively limited role.”
“I’m engaged in trying to be helpful,” he said. “I’m not trying to be a commentator. I realize you want me to say more. That’s not my role here. When one loses track of what one’s role is, one ends up doing nothing.”
Vitvitsky added that he lauded skepticism towards the Prosecutor General’s Office but argued that sometimes it was unjustified.
“Skepticism is good, healthy,” he said. “But often – because of Maidan and all the expectations – it seems to me that people have lapsed into cynicism rather than skepticism.”
But Yurchyshyn argued that Lutsenko was undermining his image by failing to fire or punish corrupt prosecutors.
“The question is whether he will be independent when making those decisions or whether he will further listen to certain Poroshenko allies like Hranovsky and Kononenko, in which case we can forget about reform,” he said.
