Editor’s Note: Every week Kyiv Post journalist Oleg Sukhov picks a winner and loser in Ukraine’s drive to transform itself into a rule-of-law, European-style democracy.
Reformer of the week – Sergii Leshchenko
Independent lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko has played a major role in both exposing the alleged wrongdoing of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort and Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko’s attempts to curry favor with Trump.
Leshchenko on May 14 published a memo allegedly leaked from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine. The memo shows that prosecutors are accusing former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden of receiving “an unlawful benefit” from former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky’s Burisma Group, an oil and gas producer. Leshchenko said that the memo had been submitted by Lutsenko’s team to Trump’s team and that he had received it from journalists working for a news site affiliated with Trump.
Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan denied that the memo had been submitted from Lutsenko’s team to Trump’s team. He has been accused of trying to curry favor with Trump by investigating Biden, Trump’s potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election.
Lutsenko responded to Leshchenko’s comments on May 14 by calling him a “skunk” and saying that he would be questioned and charged with unlawfully revealing the details of the Manafort investigation. On May 16, the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office opened a bribery investigation against Leshchenko – a case that has been dismissed by the lawmaker as a fabricated case and a political vendetta.
In 2016 Leshchenko revealed that Manafort’s surname and signature had been found in the so-called “black ledger” of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
Anti-reformer of the week – Natalia Shaptala
Natalia Shaptala was elected on May 14 as the chairwoman of the Constitutional Court to replace Stanislav Shevchuk. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Civil society watchdogs call her a member of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s group of Constitutional Court judges because she was appointed to the court under Yanukovych in 2010 and comes from the ex-president’s main political base, Donetsk.
Shaptala and two other incumbent Constitutional Court judges — Mykhailo Hultai and Mykhailo Zaporozhets — are under investigation in a usurpation of power case involving Yanukovych. The judges, who have denied wrongdoing, are accused of adopting several decisions that enabled Yanukovych to monopolize political power.
According to records in the alleged off-the-books ledger of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, judges from the Constitutional Court received $6 million from the party for rulings that helped the ex-president usurp power.
While Yanukovych has been charged with usurpation of power, there have been no formal charges against the Constitutional Court judges accused of helping Yanukovych. The Prosecutor General’s Office has faced accusations of covering up for the judges for political reasons. It has denied these accusations of sabotage.
In 2014, the Verkhovna Rada fired five Constitutional Court judges for violating their oath by letting Yanukovych monopolize power. Lawmakers also urged the president and the Congress of Judges to fire the remaining judges implicated in the case, including Shaptala. However, President Petro Poroshenko and the congress have not done so.
In February Shaptala also voted for the cancellation of a law criminalizing illicit enrichment. The court claimed that the law violated the rule of law, the legal certainty principle and the presumption of innocence. This legal reasoning has been rejected as flawed and incorrect by numerous Ukrainian and foreign experts.
