Andriy Portnov, the former deputy chief of staff of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, is still a wanted man in Ukraine.
However, almost a year after the lawyer was placed on the wanted list on suspicion of embezzling state assets, the Prosecutor General’s Office in Ukraine has failed to provide international courts with any evidence of his involvement in such crimes.
The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to Kyiv Post requests for comment.
The General Court of the European Union ruled on Oct. 26 that the EU was wrong to freeze Portnov’s assets. The decision came seven months after the EU removed Portnov from its blacklist of 22 members of the Yanukovych regime. He was the first among 22 allies of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych to have his assets unfrozen in the 28-nation bloc.
The news also came in the wake of public criticism against Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who has been accused of repeatedly sabotaging prosecutorial reforms and covering up corruption.
Yegor Sobolev, the lawmaker who is currently leading the charge to fire the prosecutor general, has so far collected 118 signatures in parliament to dismiss the presidential appointee. To put the issue on parliament’s agenda, he needs the signatures of at least 32 more lawmakers.
The EU court in Luxembourg found that the European Council “identified Portnov as responsible for the misappropriation of Ukrainian state funds solely on the basis of a letter of March 3, 2014 from the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine.” Oleh Mahnitsky, who was a member of the Svoboda party then, was acting prosecutor general then.
The prosecutorial letter stated that the investigation into Portnov had “made it possible to establish that there had been the misappropriation of sizeable amounts of state funds, and the subsequent illegal transfer of those funds out of Ukraine.”
But according to the General Court’s ruling, that letter “failed to provide any details concerning either the facts alleged against Portnov, or his responsibility in that regard.”
Seventeen former high-level Ukrainian officials, including ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, remain sanctioned by the European Union on suspicion of embezzling state funds and other human rights violations. At least 12 are challenging the sanctions in the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg.
In its press release, the court said: “The court concludes, on that basis, that the inclusion of Portnov’s name on the list does not satisfy the criteria for designating persons whose funds are to be frozen.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian activists have long been warning that unless Ukraine’s prosecutors change their attitudes and improve their performance, Ukraine might lose all of the money now frozen on the accounts of the former allies of Yanukovych.
Vitaliy Shabunin of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a watchdog organization, says it’s up to Ukraine to prove the case against Portnov and others like him.
“The assets are frozen because of the EU sanctions. The sanctions were imposed because the assets are considered to have been received in a corrupt way,” Shabunin said. “The lawyers of Yanukovych and his aides ask (the international courts) how they can prove that the money is of illegal origin. EU law enforcement can get that evidence only from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office.”
The European Council in March 2014 froze the funds of 18 members of the Yanukovych regime. They were identified “as responsible for the misappropriation of funds belonging to the Ukrainian state, and for violations of human rights in Ukraine.” The council also banned these people from entry into and transit within the EU.
Among them were Yanukovych and his two sons, as well as former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, former Prosecutor General Victor Pshonka, and others. Later, the council added four more people to the list.
For most of them, the sanctions were extended until at least early 2016, but four people were removed last March, one of them being Portnov. Yanukovych’s son, Viktor Jr., who died in an accident in Russia, was also taken off the list.
At least 12 of those who remain on the EU blacklist have challenged the council’s decisions, the court’s press service told the Kyiv Post.
Yanukovych and his son Oleksandr Yanukovych on Oct. 19 and 13, respectively, also filed similar lawsuits against Ukraine with the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the country has committed numerous “violations of human rights” against them.
Shabunin said he has concluded that the Prosecutor General’s Office is sabotaging “the cases… intentionally.”
Karl Volokh, an activist of the Civic Lustration Committee, agreed with Shabunin. Volokh said there was plenty of evidence against Yanukovych and his allies, but the Prosecutor General’s Office “doesn’t want to investigate a damn thing. This is an issue of political will… The Prosecutor General’s Office is not a political body – it has to investigate crimes.”
The fact that Portnov won his case in the EU court doesn’t necessarily mean that the others will also win, according to Oleksandr Banchuk from the Center for Political and Legal Reforms. But there is always the risk that they will.
“Everything depends on the quality of our investigation,” Banchuk told the Kyiv Post.
An appeal against the ruling in Portnov’s case can be brought before the General Court of the EU in Luxemburg by the European Council within two months.
Meanwhile, Portnov wrote on his Facebook page that “the Ukrainian authorities will have to take the EU court’s decision about (me) into account,” and that the “Ukrainian president together with the EU ambassador in Ukraine and the officials from the Prosecutor General’s Office should prepare themselves for the next round” of his fight against those who have tried to defame him.
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
