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Reformer of the week – Oksana Divnich
Oksana Divnich, an outspoken whistleblower at the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, resigned from the agency on June 28 amid intensifying pressure.
The NAPC did not respond to requests for comment.
Divnich, head of the NAPC’s internal audit unit, was reprimanded by the NAPC’s leadership in May for allegedly violating the rules by conducting an audit that led to revelations of alleged corruption at the NAPC in November, and publishing the results. The reprimand was subsequently canceled, but she was reprimanded again by Oleksandr Mangul, head of the agency, for the same reason. Divnich is disputing the reprimand, saying that it was illegal.
Hanna Solomatina, ex-head of the NAPC’s department for financial monitoring, told the Kyiv Post that Divnich had been blocked from accessing documents and banned from carrying out further audits, which had paralyzed her work.
Divnich and Solomatina said in November that the agency was involved in large-scale corruption and was completely controlled by the Presidential Administration. The NAPC and the Presidential Administration denied the accusations.
Solomatina published what she says is correspondence in which Oleksiy Horashchenkov, a Presidential Administration official, tries to give her orders. The Kyiv Post has also obtained the documents from the audit on which the corruption investigation is based.
In November, the NAPC corruption case was transferred on the orders of Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko from the independent National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to the presidentially controlled Security Service of Ukraine, in what critics, including Solomatina, believe to be an effort to destroy the case.
The investigation has seen no progress since then, and no one at the NAPC or the Presidential Administration has been suspended or fired in connection with the graft case.
Anti-reformer of the week – Nazar Kholodnytsky
A member of the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors has prepared a report confirming that Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky violated prosecutorial ethics and recommending that he be reprimanded, according to leaked fragments of a report published by the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper on July 2.
The report is seen by anti-corruption activists as an attempt to save Kholodnytsky as a puppet of the authorities instead of firing him. Kholodnytsky’s office and the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors did not respond to requests for comment.
Previously Kholodnytsky denied being influenced by the Presidential Administration.
In April the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine released recordings of Kholodnytsky pressuring prosecutors and judges to stop cases against high-profile suspects and tipping off other suspects about planned searches.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko asked the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors to consider firing Kholodnytsky. NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk also asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to bring charges against Kholodnytsky, but they have not done so.
The leaked report says that the complaint sent by Sytnyk and Lutsenko to the commission “has good grounds and is fully confirmed by evidence.”
The report must be considered by the commission no earlier than in 10 days after Kholodnytsky receives the report. After that, the issue of punishing Kholodnytsky will be considered by the Council of Prosecutors and Lutsenko.
Kholodnytsky has blocked all NABU cases since the tapes were released, Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, told the Kyiv Post. Previously Kholodnytsky had denied such accusations.
Kholodnytsky has filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking to ban the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors from using the NABU tapes as evidence against him.
Meanwhile, Kholodnytsky and his family have acquired for free premium land with an area of more than half a hectare in Kyiv Oblast’s Kyivo-Svyatoshynsky District, where he had used to be a top prosecutor, according to government registers. Kholodnytsky denied the accusations of wrongdoing when acquiring the land.
