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 – Tetiana Kozachenko
Tetiana Kozachenko, head of the civic oversight council at the Justice Ministry’s lustration department, on May 22 exposed the illegal appointment of Andriy Bohdan as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff.
Bohdan has no right to be Zelenskiy’s chief of staff under the 2014 law on the firing of top officials who served then-President Viktor Yanukovych. He was the anti-corruption ombudsman in then Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s Cabinet in 2010 to 2014.
Bohdan claimed that the 2014 lustration law does not apply to him because he believes that, under the 2016 civil service law, the presidential chief of staff is not a civil servant. He claimed that lustration law only applies to civil servants.
Kozachenko, who was the head of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department in 2014 to 2016, refuted Bohdan’s claim, saying that the 2014 lustration law explicitly mentions a 10-year ban on holding the job of presidential chief of staff for top Yanukovych era officials.
“The issuing of (Zelenskiy’s) decree in violation of the law means that the president puts himself above the law and demonstrates his attitude towards the rule of law,” she said. “The person who was appointed to this job is aware of this and damages the president’s reputation this way.”
Vitaly Tytych, a lawyer and ex-coordinator of the judiciary civil society watchdog Public Integrity Council, also said that Bohdan’s claim that the presidential chief of staff is not a civil servant is false. The 2016 civil service law establishes a special procedure for the appointment of the presidential chief of staff but he still remains a civil servant under Ukrainian law and the Constitution, he argued.
Bohdan is also listed as subject to lustration in one of the official lists on the site of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department.
Anti-reformer of the week – Andriy Bohdan
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on May 21 appointed Andriy Bohdan as his chief of staff.
Under the 2014 lustration law, Bohdan has no right to hold state jobs, including that of the chief of staff, because he was the anti-corruption ombudsman at then Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s Cabinet in 2010 to 2014.
The law explicitly imposes a 10-year ban from the job of the presidential chief of staff on those who served for more than a year as the anti-corruption ombudsman under Yanukovych.
The law also imposes another ban from the job of the presidential chief of staff on those who held the job of the anti-corruption ombudsman during the EuroMaidan Revolution from Nov. 21, 2013 through Feb. 22, 2014 and did not resign voluntarily before Feb. 22, 2014. Bohdan resigned on March 5, 2014.
Bohdan claimed that the 2014 lustration law does not apply to him because he believes that, under the 2016 civil service law, the presidential chief of staff is not a civil servant. He claimed that lustration only applies to civil servants.
Deputy Justice Minister Serhiy Petukhov, Tetiana Kozachenko and Anna Kalynchuk – both former heads of the lustration department – and Iegor Soboliev, a co-author of the lustration law, have refuted Bohdan’s claims and confirmed that Bohdan has no right to be the presidential chief of staff under the lustration law.
Bohdan is also controversial because he has been a lawyer for billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who was suspected of backing President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Kolomoisky and Zelenskiy deny being political allies.
In 2014 Bohdan was on the list of ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc in the parliamentary election, although he did not get a seat in the Verkhovna Rada because he was not high enough on the party list. Bohdan was supposed to get into parliament after several Poroshenko Bloc lawmakers left parliament and got government jobs in 2015.
However, relations between Kolomoisky and Poroshenko deteriorated, and in 2016 the Rada passed a law allowing parties to redistribute places on their lists. As a result, Bohdan did not become a lawmaker. The media dubbed it “the Bohdan law.”
