Ukrainian civic activists have rallied to urge lawmakers to drop draft laws that they say will sabotage anti-corruption reforms and help corrupt officials evade punishment.
Activists with the Reanimation Package of Reforms anti-corruption organization protested next to the parliament’s building in Kyiv on Oct. 3.
See the Kyiv Post gallery about the protest
At the protest, they pretended to cook fish soup and held banners reading, “Have you been eating fish soup?” In Ukrainian, the phrase sounds very similar to “Have you f*cking lost your mind?”
The protesters criticized several draft laws that lawmakers have tabled in parliament for consideration. One of the bills suggests restricting public access to particular data in the electronic declarations of officials’ assets. Another two draft laws would stop the National Anti-Corruption Bureau from investigating high-profile cases against corrupt officials.
E-declarations
According to Sasha Drik, head of the Civic Lustration Committee, since the law that introduced the electronic declarations was passed by the Verkhovna Rada in October 2014, there have been nine attempts to sabotage it.
Electronic declarations for officials are a key requirement of the European Union for Ukraine to be granted the visa-free travel regime.
But only a month after the system was finally launched on Sept. 1, it’s again under risk, activists say.
They said a draft law, authored by Ihor Hryniv, the head of the pro-presidential Bloc of Petro Poroshenko in parliament, would gut the electronic declarations system of much of its efficacy. The law was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada on Sept. 29.
The document suggests restricting public access to information about officials’ assets, including cash, the money in the banks, and valuable movable property such as jewelry, art pieces and other luxury items.
According to the explanatory note published along with the draft law on the Verkhovna Rada’s website, the changes will protect officials from possible crimes against their property.
“Anyone, including criminal-minded people with elementary analytical skills, will be able, using data from the open declarations, to identify causal connections that would allow them to determine where valuable movable property, cash or other expensive objects are located, as well as the value of such objects,” the note reads.
According to the note, officials will still have to file the data in the declarations, so there isn’t any risk to the reform.
Activists did not agree.
They said such information is crucial for the public to know, as cash and luxury objects are usually the ones that corrupt officials receive through shady schemes.
According to Vitaly Shabunin, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, the anti-corruption reform does not have much sense without wide public access to officials’ declarations.
Yegor Sobolev, a Ukrainian lawmaker and the head of the anti-corruption parliamentary committee, which will review the document before it is put to the the, also slammed the proposed law.
“An official has to show his property and explain where it came from,” he said at the protest. “They want to rewrite the legislation. They are scared by it… They can’t not declare (their property), as it is a crime, but neither can they declare it, as it is illegal enrichment.”
Sobolev promised to persuade his colleagues not to support the bill.
Investigating corruption
At the same time, other lawmakers within the Poroshenko Bloc faction co-authored two draft laws that suggest granting the prosecutor general the authority to single-handedly decide which body will investigate graft cases, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau or the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has already spoken in favor of such initiative.
Speaking at a news conference on Sept. 28, he said that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau was unable to handle all the cases it has been given.
“There are so many crimes in the country that it is not effective to hand the unique right to fight high-profile graft to one little law enforcement body,” he said.
Shabunin said that if parliament adopts these changes, all the “interesting (electronic_ declarations” will end up in Lutsenko’s office and “die there.”
Several other recent proposals have also been lambasted by critics as anti-reformist.
The Supreme Court on Oct. 3 asked the Constitutional Court to consider canceling the ongoing judicial reform, which came into effect on Sept. 30.
Meanwhile, the Verkhovna Rada is expected to consider legislation introducing the principle that a “police officer is always right,” implying that citizens must obey even illegal orders from the police and dispute them later.
Another controversial bill would give the president the right to appoint heads of district administrations, which critics say creates the risk of the usurpation of power by Poroshenko.
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]. Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov contributed reporting to the story. He can be reached at [email protected].
