Reformer of the week – Yevhen Shevchenko
Yevhen Shevchenko, an undercover agent of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and a veteran of the Donbas volunteer battalion, and his bureau are increasingly coming under attack from the authorities.
A bill that could potentially block the investigative activities of the NABU, an independent anti-corruption watchdog, was submitted to parliament on March 19 by lawmaker Nina Yuzhanina of the 135-member Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction.
The legislation would create a presidentially controlled National Financial Security Bureau, which will be able to investigate the embezzlement of government funds under Article 191-1, overlapping with high-profile cases of the NABU, and replacing the State Fiscal Service’s notoriously corrupt tax police.
As a result, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko would have powers to take major cases away from the NABU and transfer them to the National Financial Security Bureau, helping corrupt officials escape justice, according to Zlata Simonenko, a law enforcement expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms.
Yevhen Shevchenko and other undercover NABU agents had their cover blown when several of them were arrested in November.
Three NABU agents face charges by the Prosecutor General’s Office that they allegedly provoked Dina Pimakhova, then first deputy head of the State Migration Service, to solicit a bribe. They deny the accusations.
NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk said that in this way the country’s leadership, the prosecutor’s office and the Security Service of Ukraine had foiled all NABU undercover operations and were trying to destroy the bureau.
Anti-reformer of the week – Lyudmila Denisova
Lyudmila Denisova, a lawmaker from the People’s Front party, was appointed by the Verkhovna Rada on March 15 as the human rights ombudsman. Being a pro-government politician, she is unlikely to successfully protect human rights and will just rubber-stamp the government’s decisions, according to her critics.
According to Russian government registers, Denisova and her family members own assets in Russia-annexed Crimea. She has been thus accused of illegally cooperating with Crimea’s occupation authorities, which could constitute a crime – an accusation that she denies.
Before Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Denisova used to hold 25 percent in construction company Krymzalizobeton.
In 2015 the company was registered according to Russian law. In the State Register of Legal Entities of the Russian Federation, Krymzalizobeton’s papers indicate a founder – Ukrainian company Triora. Denisova has a 25 percent stake in Triora.
Apart from that, the ombudsman’s daughters are registered as founders of five companies operating in Crimea under Russian law.
Denisova has denied all the accusations, saying that her assets were nationalized by Russia – a claim that contradicts Russian government registers.
Under Ukrainian law, an ombudsman is required to have experience in human rights activities.
Ukrainian LGBT activist Bogdan Globa, who started the country’s biggest LGBT organization, believes that Denisova doesn’t meet the requirement and has no experience in human rights activities whatsoever.
Meanwhile, human rights activist Halya Coynash argued that a politician’s appointment to the post violated Ukrainian law, and Denisova was appointed with numerous procedural violations. Denisova denies the accusations.
A Russian government register that proves that Lyudmila Denisova owns assets in Russian-annexed Crimea.
Denisova is not the only official who allegedly cooperates with Crimea’s occupation authorities.
Valentyna Simonenko, a nominee for the new Supreme Court, registered as a Russian taxpayer in Russian-annexed Crimea in 2015, according to the official register of Russia’s Federal Tax Service checked by the Kyiv Post. Simonenko denies the accusations of wrongdoing.
“By appealing to the illegal occupation authorities and assuming legal obligations before the aggressor country, she effectively recognized the jurisdiction of Crimean occupation authorities and agreed to pay taxes to the aggressor country’s budget, at whose expense the war against the Ukrainian people is being waged,” the Public Integrity Council said in a statement.
Vyacheslav Abroskin – a deputy head of the National Police and chief of Donetsk Oblast police – allegedly tried to serve the 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.
According to an alleged Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) document published on March 12 by Anton Shevtsov, a former Vinnytsa Oblast police chief charged with treason, Shevstov has received intelligence information from Abroskin, who is mentioned in the document as an alleged liaison of pro-Russian Crimean separatist Sergei Aksyonov.
Meanwhile, Security Service of Ukraine Deputy Chief Vitaly Malikov, a former 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 in January 2014.
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.
