When the going gets tough, President Petro Poroshenko fights back with meaningless and absurd statistics.
In a March 6 Financial Times interview, Poroshenko stated that “1,692 corruption cases had a Ukrainian court decision just during 2017.” He repeated the statistic at a meeting of business associations on March 12.
This reminds us of a few years ago when, in a June 10, 2015 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Poroshenko wrote: “Over the past year, 2,702 former officials have been convicted of corruption.” We spent months trying to get the list or even one name from the Presidential Administration — to no avail. That’s because no one of consequence has been convicted of corruption — then or now.
The statistical spurts coincide with the obstructor-in-chief’s efforts to fend off criticism of his flailing and failing anti-corruption drive.
More than two years ago, Poroshenko faced demands to fire the ineffectual Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. He only did so in March 2016, when U. S. Vice President Joseph Biden threatened to cut off a $1 billion loan guarantee. Poroshenko responded by appointing an even more ineffectual and politically pliant replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko.
Today the issue is Poroshenko’s resistance to an independent anti-corruption court. He says he’s for it, but all his actions say he’s against it. He bad-mouthed the idea vigorously until Western donors made it clear they will cut off assistance until such a court is established.
Now he’s playing his game to stall on legislation as long as possible and, when no longer possible, get a decent law passed. Then he will make sure only he and his allies decide who gets appointed to the court.
Let’s hope this is obvious to all, especially Ukraine’s Western donors. Alexander Paraschiy, an analyst with Concorde Capital in Kyiv, wrote on March 13: “When forced to finally launch the court, we expect that power brokers will make the necessary adjustments to make the court fit their needs (and prevent it from threatening their power), regardless of the legislation that is approved.”
As for the 1,692 corruption cases supposedly decided by courts last year, none of them involved defendants named Viktor Yanukovych, Leonid Kuchma, Sergei Kurchenko, Ihor Kolomoisky, Dmytro Firtash, Rinat Akhmetov, Ihor Kononenko, Yuriy Boyko, Arsen Avakov, Oleh Hladkovsky, Viktor Medvedchuk, Serhiy Lyovochkin and many others going back to 1991. All of these oligarchs and top officials or ex-officials make good suspects — having been implicated in financial and other crimes that have collectively stripped Ukraine of billions of dollars. All deny the charges. All are too politically powerful to face any real investigation.
To make matters worse, whatever crime and corruption takes place starting on March 15 puts a limit of 18 months, with exceptions, on pre-trial investigations. That could ensure that complex financial crimes, such as the $20 billion bank fraud that fleeced Ukrainians, never get solved.
The longer crimes go uninvestigated, the lower the chances of solving them. Poroshenko has put up one roadblock after another. Besides stalling on the anti-corruption court, there’s also been delays in setting up a powerful Financial Investigation Service to investigate major financial crimes.
Poroshenko has taken to calling the independent anti-corruption court the final piece of judicial reform that needs to be completed. Nonsense.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine is understaffed and doesn’t have full investigative powers. Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnitskiy has shown he is not independent. There’s no serious reform of law enforcement agencies, such as the Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine.
The selection of the new 111 justices to the Supreme Court is so tainted that it should be done over, as presidentially controlled commissions overrode the objections of civil society watchdogs to the appointment of at least 27 judges deemed to be too corrupt to serve.
Time is on Poroshenko’s side. He only has to get decent legislation passed through parliament creating an independent anti-corruption court — decent enough to get the International Monetary Fund, European Union and other Western donors to unfreeze their aid. Then Poroshenko can easily stall the rest of the way until he is safely past the March 31, 2019, presidential election.
And Ukrainians will see no justice for years to come.
