The agency will check officials’ asset and income declarations and determine whether they will be punished for lying or not including certain assets.
Riaboshapka said last week that the majority of the agency’s leadership, which is loyal to President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party, was trying to delay its launch by stopping all work until interviews with applicants for agency jobs are completed on July 11. He also said the agency was choosing the worst candidates with the lowest scores.
In late June Riaboshapka, a former member of Transparency International, wrote that Natalya Korchak, the agency’s head, had held a meeting of a commission for choosing the agency’s personnel in a “secret” mode without any observers or video and audio recording.
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. Critics see this as an effort to help officials escape punishment.
Anti-reformer of the week: Roman Hovda
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko on July 6 appointed controversial official Roman Hovda as the chief prosecutor of Kyiv.
Lutsenko’s opponents say he has tried to deceive the public, belying his promises to fight the prosecutorial mafia. He first asked Hovda to step down as a deputy prosecutor general as a concession to civil society but then offset this by giving him a cushy job.
The appointment of Hovda, a member of ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s team and a key representative of the old prosecutorial system, is a sign that no reform will take place.
He has been accused of supervising political cases on behalf of President Petro Poroshenko’s allies Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky, cracking down on businesses and derailing corruption investigations. Hovda denies the accusations. He has also been lambasted for supervising the Interior Ministry’s activities during crackdowns on EuroMaidan protestors in 2013-2014.
Lutsenko has also failed to fire Oleh Valendyuk, ex-prosecutor of Kyiv and now Hodva’s deputy, under the lustration law, which stipulates the dismissal of officials who served ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Hranovsky has admitted that he’s acquianted with Valendyuk.
