Reformer of the week: Timur Nishnianidze
Timur Nishnianidze, an ally of ex-Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili, was charged with embezzlement on March 9. Kyiv’s Pechersk Court has been considering his arrest for a week but has not made a decision yet.
The case was initiated by prosecutors who have been accused of having links to President Petro Poroshenko’s grey cardinals Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky. Saakashvili’s team believes the case to be fabricated, and part of a political vendetta caused by Saakashvili’s opposition to Poroshenko.
Nishnianidze is accused of getting illegal tax refunds when he was Georgia’s consul in Odesa in 2007-2012. He was an informal advisor to Saakashvili in charge of cutting government staff as part of his reforms in Odesa in 2015 to 2016.
Other Saakashvili allies who have faced criminal cases include ex-customs officials Yulia Marushevska and Roman Bakhovsky, as well as Sasha Borovik, an ex-aide to Saakashvili, and ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Davit Sakvarelidze.
Another opponent of Poroshenko targeted by prosecutors is Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy. Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, a Poroshenko loyalist, said on March 14 that Sadovy could be charged and suspended as part of a negligence case into garbage disposal in Lviv. Sadovy said he sees this as political persecution.
Anti-reformer of the week: Vitaly Malikov
Vitaly Malikov, a deputy chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), was an organizer of the March 13 crackdown on activists blocking trade with Russian-occupied territories in the Donbas.
In 2014 Malikov, then a lawmaker from ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions on Sevastopol City Council, voted to call on Yanukovych to crack down on the EuroMaidan protesters.
Alexei Kiselyov, an ex-member of Sevastopol City Council, has accused Malikov of backing pro-Kremlin separatist Alexei Chaly and the sham referendum on Crimea’s annexation held in 2014, which Malikov denies.
Malikov’s daughter welcomed Russian dictator Vladimir Putin when he visited Crimea after the annexation, according to her social networks.
He has also been accused of accumulating luxury property and high-end cars when he was the police chief of Sevastopol and owning commercial assets there.
Malikov’s wife owns several businesses that he did not declare, including ones in Russian-occupied Crimea and Moscow.
According to Ukrainian media, Malikov is the son-in-law of former Interior Minister Mykola Bilokon, who fled to Russia to escape criminal prosecution after the 2004 Orange Revolution and worked at Russia’s Justice Ministry.
Malikov has also acquired premium land plots from the state for free, Radio Liberty reported in December.
The common-law wife of another top SBU official, Pavlo Demchyna, owns high-end cars, a luxury mansion and land plots that Demchyna has not declared, according to a March 8 Slidstvo.info investigation. Demchyna, who denies graft accusations, is a protégé of President Petro Poroshenko’s grey cardinals Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky.
After the launch of officials’ electronic asset declarations last year, the SBU has refused to give either the public or the National Agency for Preventing Corruption access to them, citing a state secret. This is seen as an effort to hide SBU officials’ wealth.
Meanwhile, ex-Donetsk Oblast Police Chief Vyacheslav Abroskin, who took part in the March 13 crackdown on blockade activists, was appointed a deputy chief of the National Police on March 11. Abroskin, a representative of the anti-reformist old guard, tried to serve Russian occupation authorities as a police official in Crimea in 2014 before moving to mainland Ukraine, according to Sevastopol-based media. However, he denies this.
Abroskin on March 16 supported an idea by People’s Front lawmaker Yevgeny Deidei to beat Batkivshchyna lawmaker Igor Lutsenko with a baseball bat for criticism of the police.
Pro-blockade protesters and several regional legislatures have called for the firing of Malikov, Abroskin and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Meanwhile, police officer Yuriy Goluban – one of Abroskin’s subordinates who entered the Verkhona Rada on March 15 in violation of parliamentary procedure – admitted on March 17 that he had met with Russian-backed separatist leader Oleksandr Khodakovsky when the war with Russia started in April to May 2014. Khodakovsky had said before that Goluban had faught for separatists, though Goluban denies this.
