Two high-ranking prosecutors who allegedly took a Hr 3.15 million bribe as part of a sting operation were arrested by the Security Services of Ukraine on July 5.
Reporting the allegations on Facebook on July 6,
Georgian Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze also said a search of the
suspects’ offices and homes had uncovered $400,000 in cash, securities, jewelry
(including 65 diamonds) and a Kalashnikov automatic rifle.
“This case is a warning to all – no prosecutors are
above the law!” wrote Sakvarelidze, who heads the newly created general
inspectorate, an internal affairs controller unit within the Prosecutor General’s
Office.
The raids on the prosecutors’ offices and homes, which
were coordinated by Sakvarelidze and carried out by the Alpha special
operations unit of the security services (SBU), were unprecedented.
With most of the prosecutor’s offices empty on July 5,
a Sunday, Alpha officers overpowered guards and broke down the doors of the
premises – much to the chagrin of acting Prosecutor General Volodymyr Huzyr.
“As a prosecutor, I wasn’t happy when I saw the
destruction,” Huzyr said at a press briefing on July 6. With a tone of
disbelief in his voice, Huzyr said that one of the offices raided – the
Prosecutor General’s Office Central Investigations Department – had been under
even heavier guard than the main office.
The arrested individuals were the deputy head of the office’s
Central Investigations Department, Volodymyr Shapakin, and the deputy chief
prosecutor for Kyiv Oblast, Oleksandr Korniets.
The prosecutors allegedly extorted money from a local
businessman involved with the excavation of sand, effectively freezing the
activities of the business. But instead of bowing to the pressure, the
businessman reported the extortion attempts to the authorities, who set up a
sting operation to catch them in the act of taking bribes.
The two suspects could be charged for extorting bribes
and could face from eight to 12 years in prison. A third person, thought to be
an intermediary, was also arrested, but not named.
And in a twist to the high-profile case, the Prosecutor
General’s Office itself allegedly tried to foil Sakvarelidze’s operation.
Within 20 minutes of its launch, Huzyr was at the
scene, and reportedly attempted to halt the search of the premises, tearing up
the identification card of an investigator and threatening him, according to
lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist.
Huzyr also opened a criminal case on the “seizure of
state institutions” in apparent retaliation against Sakvarelidze’s raid, but
later downplayed the move, saying this had been a mere formality required by
proper procedure in the case of such events.
With a row over the raid brewing quickly on July 6,
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko then entered the mix, calling a televised
meeting among himself, SBU chief Vasyl Hrytsak, Sakvarelidze and Huzyr.
The times “when prosecutors had immunity are over,”
Poroshenko told Huzyr at the meeting, during which the president brokered a
“peace deal” between the parties.
Sakvarelidze agreed to delete allegations he had made
on Facebook that corruption in the Prosecutor General’s Office tainted the
office’s highest leadership, while Huzyr agreed to hold a press conference at
which he presented the operation as the work of the Prosecutor General’s Office
itself, denying there were any internal conflicts in the institution.
The president’s intervention in the affair immediately
prompted a political reaction. Batkivshina member of parliament Sergiy
Vlasenko, the former defense attorney of Yulia Tymoshenko, suggested in
comments on Facebook that the case would have gone nowhere if the president
hadn’t intervened.
Samopomich Party member of parliament Pavlo Kostenko
wasn’t convinced by Huzyr’s explanations either, and criticized the acting
prosecutor general for being a part of the problem. Speaking on Ukrainian news
channel 112, Kostenko claimed Huzyr was responsible for stalling hundreds of
high-profile corruption cases against judges and other officials.
“It’s more convenient for the Prosecutor General’s
Office to keep the cases in limbo and use them as leverage than to take them to
court,” Kostenko said, explaining that the office likes to keep a few swords of
Damocles hanging over those whom it might want to influence in the cases it
deals with.
Both Tymoshenko’s Batkivshina and Samopomich are
junior partners in the governing coalition, and are often seen lobbying for
more radical reform measures than the larger and more pragmatic
pro-presidential members of the five-party coalition.
Ihor Fomin, a seasoned lawyer and also a former senior
assistant to the prosecutor general, told the Kyiv Post that the current case
could provide some handy PR for the president.
“He is in dire need to show he’s taking action,” after
more a year with little to no obvious results on eradicating endemic
corruption, Fomin said of Poroshenko, echoing comments by Kostenko.
Nonetheless Fomin was impressed: “I can’t recall any
crackdown ever of this magnitude on prosecutors,” he said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office “was as sacred as the
Holy Grail – it was untouchable, it was the place where they cooked up the
politically motivated cases against the opposition” during the regime of ousted
former President Viktor Yanukovych, said Fomin, who was an attorney in several
of those cases.
“No wonder Huzyr sounds shellshocked.”
Kyiv Post staff writer
Johannes Wamberg Andersen can be reached at [email protected]
