The commission argued that Horbatiuk’s stint as an investigator and senior investigator at the Prosecutor General’s Office did not count as a top official’s experience – one of the requirements for the job.
Civic activists attribute this decision to the fact that Horbatiuk, head of the department for trials in absentia, is seen as too independent from the authorities. They say that he had been a top official since he headed investigative groups and that people with less important jobs had been allowed to participate.
Viktor Trepak, an ex-deputy chief of the Security Service of Ukraine, wrote on Facebook on July 27 that the competition’s winner had already been pre-determined by Oleksandr Hranovsky, an ally of President Petro Poroshenko accused of corruption and interfering with law enforcement. Hranovsky denies the accusations.
Horbatiuk, who is responsible for the investigations into the murder of more than 100 EuroMaidan demonstrators, has been praised by their lawyers.
Anti-reformer of the week: Leonid Yevdochenko
Leonid Yevdochenko, head of the State Service for Government Communications, stands accused of derailing the launch of electronic property and income declarations for government officials.
The service was scheduled to authorize documents for electronic property declarations by July 29 but failed to do that. It was expected to issue a permit for the declaration system by Aug. 12.
If the electronic declaration system is launched without such a permit, it will likely be recognized by courts as illegal, and it will be impossible to punish officials for false declarations, Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, wrote in his blog on Aug. 2.
Yevdochenko denied the accusations on Aug. 3, saying that his service would do its best to issue a permit before the declaration system is supposed to start operating on Aug. 15.
Ukrainian authorities have been dragging their feet on the agency’s launch since March 2015, when it was formally set up, and have also tried to create legal loopholes for corrupt officials’ declarations in what critics see as an effort to help them escape punishment.
