Reformer of the week: Ruslan Riaboshapka
Ruslan Riaboshapka, a reformist top official of the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, resigned on June 9.
Riaboshapka said the agency had been completely discredited due to its failure to check the electronic asset declaration of a single official since the declaration system was launched in September.
He called for the re-launch of the agency and the appointment of new leadership.
Meanwhile, all of the employees of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, and hundreds of prosecutors and judges are refusing to disclose their declarations, saying the information is a state secret or an investigative secret.
Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor Anatoly Matios on June 14 also proposed legislation to block access to the declarations of all officials who have anything to do with security and defense. The bill would also exempt fired officials and officials’ family members from responsibility for lying in declarations.
Instead of checking officials’ declarations, the authorities in March introduced the same declaration requirements for anti-corruption activists as for government officials. The measure has no equivalents in the West and is widely seen as a major attack on civil society. Oleh Barna, a lawmaker from the Poroshenko Bloc, made the idea even more absurd on June 7, proposing that all Ukrainian citizens file e-declarations.
In 2015 to 2016, the agency dragged its feet on launching the declaration system and faced accusations of sabotaging the launch.
The Presidential Administration has been accused of controlling the agency through its head Natalya Korchak and its chief of staff Ihor Tkachenko and using it to fabricate political cases. It denies the accusations.
Anti-reformer of the week: Volodymyr Kistion
Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Kistion and Nina Yuzhanina, a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc, were photographed on June 2 together with ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky at a forum held by Zlochevsky’s Burisma firm in Monaco.
Kistion and Yuzhanina claimed on June 9 they had not known that Zlochevsky would be there.
In January, prosecutors closed an embezzlement case against Zlochevsky. Fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a suspect in a theft case, has claimed that Poroshenko had extorted $80 million from Zlochevsky to unfreeze his assets — a claim denied by the president.
Meanwhile, Zlochevsky’s Burisma group has supplied natural gas to firms owned by Poroshenko and his allies, according to Radio Liberty. Onyshchenko claims that the gas was supplied free of charge as payment for closing the Zlochevsky case.
In December Olga Vasilevskaya, a journalist at television channel 1+1, published what she claimed to be photos of Poroshenko’s top ally and lawmaker Igor Kononenko meeting in Vienna with Zlochevsky.
In 2008 to 2014 Kistion was a deputy of Volodymyr Groysman, currently Prime Minister and then mayor of Vinnytsya, Poroshenko’s main political base. Kistion reportedly initiated the allocation of city budget funds for Gepard, a security firm accused of organizing pro-government thugs, or “titushki”, under Yanukovych. Kistion, who is alleged to be linked to the firm, denies the accusations.
In 2014 Gepard employees also clashed with activist Yury Pavlenko, who tore up a Poroshenko portrait in 2014 during clashes with the police in Vinnytsya, and was sentenced in 2016 to 4.5 years on charges of hooliganism and seizure of a government building. Pavlenko believes the case to be political.
