Representing six out of parliament’s eight factions, 59 members of parliament submitted a motion to the Constitutional Court in 2017 asking to rule as unconstitutional the Criminal Code article on unlawful enrichment. Two years later, on Feb. 26, the court satisfied their claim, effectively canceling all ongoing illicit enrichment investigations of public officials and prompting outrage of civil society.
A closer look finds that many of the lawmakers were themselves implicated in unlawful enrichment cases. The Kyiv Post reached out to many of them, asking to comment on their request to the Constitutional Court, but received no answers by the time this story went to press.
The leading force behind the motion were lawmakers from the 80-member People’s Front party faction: 23 of them signed the motion.
Among them was Pavlo Pynzenyk. Pynzenyk is the deputy head of the parliament’s regulatory committee. Among this committee’s functions is an especially important one: whenever the prosecutor’s office seeks to prosecute a lawmaker, for unlawful enrichment or on other charges, it appeals to the parliament to lift the lawmaker’s immunity. Pynzenyk’s committee has to decide whether to approve it and put it up for voting.
Other notable signatures include Yevhen Deidei, who was convicted in 2012 for assault and robbery. In 2014 he became the head of a police taskforce battalion, and then a lawmaker. He was suspected of unlawful enrichment by both the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, who unsuccessfully tried to lift his parliamentarian immunity.
Vadym Pidbereznyak (L) together with Yevhen Deidei (center), who’s under investigation for unlawful enrichment, are among those who signed the petition to deem the law on unlawful enrichment unconstitutional. (UNIAN)
Signee Maksym Poliakov has been the subject of multiple corruption investigations, including unlawful enrichment through taking bribes from illegal amber miners. Serhii Faiermark is currently the subject of an ongoing investigation conducted by NABU concerning corruption with tenders. Oleh Kryshyn and Fedir Benduzhenko have given personal guarantees in court to gain the release from arrest of people charged with corruption.
Eleven members of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko supported the appeal.
Among them is Valeriy Ishchenko, who is the subject of a pre-trial investigation in a corruption case.
According to Bihus.Info, in 2016 Ruslan Solvar, another signatory, hasn’t declared any property, while his mother, a school teacher, owns property worth over Hr 36 million ($1.4 million).
Eleven lawmakers from the Vidrodzhennya group signed the appeal. Among them is the fraction’s leader Viktor Bondar, who is registered as a candidate for the upcoming presidential elections, scheduled to take place on March 31.
Others include Dmytro Sviatash, who failed to declare over $1 million worth of debts to banks, according to the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption. Sviatash is currently in the middle of a trial concerning the debt of his AIS group, a chain of car dealerships. Hennadiy Bobov and Anton Kisse were subjects of tax evasion cases, after which Bobov was forced to pay over $1 million of taxes, while Kisse is still under investigation.
Other signees are Oleh Kulinich, who heads the subcommittee on land transactions, Viktor Razvadovskyi, who bought his seventh elite car and received a Hr 12 million ($450,000) gift in 2016, according to his online declaration, and Yuriy Shapovalov, whose undeclared racing cars were a subject of interest from NABU.
Ten members of the Opposition Bloc supported the appeal, among them Dmytro Kolesnikov, who was the subject of a corruption investigation, with the prosecutor general’s office trying and failing to lift his parliamentary immunity in June 2018. Another signee was Yevhen Balytsky. In 2016, a fellow lawmaker and ex-journalist Sergii Leshchenko asked the NABU to investigate Balytsky’s alleged corruption: the lawmaker allegedly failed to declare five airplanes his family owned. Later, the authorities opened an investigation against Balytsky on separatism charges, which he denied.
Among the petitioners was also Nataliya Korolevska, who was a member of Mykola Azarov’s cabinet during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych.
Seven of the Opposition’s Bloc’s 10 petitioners also voted on June 7, 2018 against the creation of an anti-corruption court.
Among the three members of parliament from Volya Narodu who supported the petition, Stanislav Berezkin is the best known. The Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating Berezkin in connection with the embezzlement of $20 million from the state-owned Oshchadbank — a charge he denies. Prosecutors sought to lift Berezkin’s immunity from prosecution in 2018, but parliament didn’t support it.
Ihor Molotok and Serhii Martyniak have both been allegedly subjects of NABU investigations — Molotok concerning unlawful compensation for living expenses, and Martyniak concerning undeclared property.
Serhiy Melnychuk from the Radical Party, who also signed the petition, has been the subject of multiple legal cases, with his parliamentary immunity stripped in 2015. He is currently the subject of an investigation into making a false assets declaration. He declared owning a trillion hryvnia in cash in 2016, which he later said was a joke, and failed to declare some of his real property.
Petition signatories:
People’s Front (23) — Oleksandr Kirsh; Pavlo Pynzenyk; Yaroslav Yedakov; Dmytro Stetsenko; Maksym Poliakov; Valerii Lunchenko; Ihor Brychenko; Taras Kremin; Fedir Benduzhenko; Oleksandr Horbunov; Mykola Kniazhytskyi; Vladyslav Danilin; Oleh Kryshyn; Olena Masorina; Vitalii Korchyk; Yevhen Deidei; Volodymyr Shkvaryliuk; Anatolii Dyriv; Serhii Faiermark; Roman Zastavnyi; Yurii Vozniuk; Vadym Pidbereznyak; Olena Boiko.
Petro Poroshenko Bloc (11) — Ruslan Solvar; Andriy Shynkovych: Gennady Chekita; Fedir Nehoy; Borys Kozyr; Dmytro Andriyevsky; Dmytro Lubinets; Hennadiy Tkachuk; Artur Palatynyi; Valeriy Ishchenko; Oleh Velykyn.
Vidrodzhennya (11) — Dmytro Sviatash; Hennadiy Bobov; Artem Iliuk; Vasyl Huliaiev; Oleh Kulinich; Viktor Bondar; Anton Kisse; Viktor Razvadovskyi; Yuriy Shapovalov; Valeriy Pysarenko; Andrii Shypko.
Opposition Bloc (10) — Kostiantyn Pavlov; Dmytro Kolesnikov; Andriy Halchenko; Ivan Myrnyi; Evhen Balytsky; Serhii Sazhko; Nataliya Korolevska; Tatyana Bakhteeva; Vasyl Nimchenko; Ihor Shurma.
Volya Narody (3) — Stanislav Berezkin; Ihor Molotok; Serhii Martyniak.
Radical Party (1) — Serhiy Melnychuk.
