Reformer of the week: Dmytro Neskoromny
Dmytro Neskoromny, a deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine’s anti-corruption department, was fired on Feb. 27.
Neskoromny participated in the arrest on bribery charges in 2015 of top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniyets and Volodymyr Shapakin – protégés of ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin known as “diamond prosecutors” due to the gems found in Korniyets’ house.
All top officials who participated in the case against the “diamond prosecutors” have been forced out of government or suspended, with most facing criminal cases. These include ex-SBU Deputy Chief Viktor Trepak, former deputy prosecutor generals Davit Sakvarelidze and Vitaly Kasko, and prosecutors Vitaly Opanasenko and Yanis Simonov.
Kyiv’s Holosiivsky Court has been dragging its feet on the Korniyets-Shapakin case for a year and has been accused of sabotaging it. The diamond prosecutors are not under arrest, and their assets have been unfrozen.
Neskoromny was fired by SBU Deputy Chief Pavlo Demchyna, who is an ally of President Petro Poroshenko’s grey cardinals Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky and is reportedly being considered as a candidate to head the SBU.
Reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko claimed on Feb. 20 that Demchyna was pressuring natural gas traders to promote the interests of a natural gas firm allegedly linked to pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk and Poroshenko’s inner circle. The Presidential Administration denied the accusations.
Meanwhile, Vasyl Burba, a former SBU official, was appointed by Poroshenko as chief of military intelligence last year and is also allegedly a candidate to become the SBU’s chief.
According to a document published by Zakarpattia Oblast Governor Gennady Moskal, Burba participated in the crackdown on EuroMaidan demonstrators on Feb. 18-20, 2014, which led to the murders of about 100 protesters. Burba was not available for comment.
The SBU is also preventing both the public and the National Agency for Preventing Corruption from accessing its employees’ electronic asset declarations.
Anti-reformer of the week: Oleksandr Tereshchuk
Ex-Kyiv Police Chief Oleksandr Tereshchuk on Feb. 27 won the competition for the job of Odesa Oblast’s first deputy governor.
Tereshchuk headed Volyn Oblast’s police under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in 2012–2014 and has no right to hold state jobs under the lustration law on the firing of Yanukovych-era officials. He has been criticized for cracking down on protesters in the oblast during the 2013–2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
He was later appointed chief of Kyiv police and fired in June 2015. But a month later President Petro Poroshenko exempted him from lustration.
The Justice Ministry’s lustration department and the Civic Lustration Committee believe Poroshenko’s decree was illegal because such exemptions can only apply to top military officials, which Poroshenko denies. In late 2015 Tereshchuk was fired again.
Poroshenko has also sabotaged the lustration law by refusing to fire his Deputy Chief of Staff Oleksiy Dniprov, Kirovohrad Oblast Governor Serhiy Kuzmenko, Luhansk Oblast Governor Yuriy Harbuz and the Security Service of Ukraine’s top investigator, Grigory Ostafiychuk, according to the lustration department.
Tereshchuk’s appointment comes as critics dismiss ongoing competitions for top state jobs as sham procedures manipulated by top officials and argue that old corrupt cadres and graft schemes are making a comeback in Odesa after Odesa Oblast’s Governor Mikheil Saakashvili’s resignation last year and the appointment of his successor Maxim Stepanov in January.
