Viktor Trepak, an ex-deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said last week that judges of the Constitutional Court featured in off-the-book accounting documents according to which the Party of Regions bribed officials.
Taras Chornovil, an ex-member of the party, told the Kyiv Post that the Party of Regions likely bribed the Constitutional Court to increase Yanukovych’s constitutional powers in 2010.
However, President Petro Poroshenko has stubbornly refused to replace Baulin. Similarly, he has refused to replace Mykhailo Okhendovsky and other members of the Central Election Commission whose powers expired in 2014.
Baulin and Okhendovsky, who also features in the off-the-book documents, deny all the accusations.
Reformer of the week: Viktor Trepak
Viktor Trepak, an ex-deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said in a May 28 interview that he had submitted documents on the Party of Regions’ graft to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
The documents show that ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s party paid about $2 billion in bribes and under-the-table handouts, said Trepak, who also used to head the security agency’s anti-corruption department.
Last year Trepak was one of the officials behind the arrest of top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniyets and Volodymyr Shapakin on bribery charges. He resigned in November, saying he could no longer work because then-Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, a loyalist of President Petro Poroshenko, was blocking the bribery case.
Trepak was replaced with a protege of lawmaker Ihor Kononenko, Poroshenko’s “grey cardinal.”
