Civic activists say that corrupt officials have gained several victories in a campaign to thwart reforms.The counter-offensive has included an attack on the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the derailing of an electronic asset declaration system for public officials.
President Petro Poroshenko’s supporters have denied accusations of sabotage, while his spokespeople, Sviatoslav Tsegolko and Andriy Zhigulin, as usual did not reply to requests for comment.
The authorities’ actions amount to overturning goals of the EuroMaidan Revolution, reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko said on Aug. 17 at a rally protesting the alleged torture by prosecutors of National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine staff.
“What’s going on now is a counter-revolution launched by corrupt officials,” said Leshchenko, who is a lawmaker from the Poroshenko Bloc. Those in power “are trying to limit all of the anti-corruption bodies that we’ve been creating over the past year, and make them impotent.”
Torture scandal
Leshchenko said on Aug. 17 that lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, a key ally of the president, was planning to file a motion with the Constitutional Court to strip the anti-graft bureau of part of its powers.
The bureau on Aug. 15 released testimony by two employees who said they had been tortured by prosecutors from the prosecutorial department headed by Volodymyr Hutsulyak and Dmytro Sus. The department has been accused of fabricating political cases on behalf of Hranovsky and Poroshenko’s grey cardinal Ihor Kononenko, although they deny the accusations.
The bureau employees said the prosecutors hit them in the ribs, necks, jaws and legs, as well as threatened to flay them and to cut out their eyes with a knife.
The two employees were conducting surveillance of prosecutors in a corruption case and had to call in the bureau’s special force unit to release them.
Sus and Hutsulyak denied the allegations, saying that officers from the bureau had beaten them up.
Leshchenko wrote on Facebook on Aug. 18 that the alleged torture was the prosecutors’ revenge for the bureau’s bribery case against Judge Mykola Chaus, who is linked to Hranovsky. Earlier this month Sus also raided the bureau’s premises, accusing it of illegal wiretapping.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko defended the prosecutors at a news briefing on Aug. 18, saying that they “are not devils,” and the bureau’s staff “are not angels.”
Lutsenko argued that there was evidence of violations of the law by both parties to the conflict.
The torture cases opened by the bureau against the prosecutors, and the battery cases started by the Prosecutor General’s Office against the bureau will be sent to the Security Service of Ukraine, which will act as an arbiter, Lutsenko said. The service’s objectivity is questioned, however, since it is headed by Poroshenko and Hranovsky loyalists.
Lutsenko also ignored demands by civic activists to fire or suspend Hutsulyak and Sus, who has admitted using a $40,000 luxury car.
“The main thing didn’t happen – people who tortured the bureau employees were not suspended,” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, told the Kyiv Post. “Lutsenko took a clear stance – to protect Sus and Co., in the same way he defended Kostyantyn Kulik (a military prosecutor charged with graft). Instead of cleansing the prosecutor’s office, Lutsenko has chosen to protect the old clans.”
Lutsenko has so far failed to fulfill his promise to fire corrupt prosecutors. Critics have dismissed as a circus his idea of prosecutors filing statements in which they can officially deny being involved in corrupt activities.
Transparency International Ukraine and the Reanimation Package of Reforms also said in a statement on Aug. 18 that the prosecutor’s office had not made any substantial progress in graft cases against ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his associates, two-and-a-half years after he fled the country. In May, Lutsenko gave his subordinates a three-month deadline to make progress, but so far not a single Yanukovych-era corruption case has been sent to court.
Leshchenko on Aug. 18 called for starting the collection of signatures for firing Lutsenko.
Yegor Sobolev, a lawmaker from the Samopomich party, went as far on Aug. 17 as to suggest that the Prosecutor General’s Office is unreformable and should be liquidated and replaced with a brand-new institution.
Declaration saga
Another setback came as the State Service for Government Communications on Aug. 12 refused to certify the electronic declaration system, arguing that it did not comply with technical requirements. The electronic declarations are a major anti-graft tool and a precondition for visa-free travel to Europe.
The National Agency for Preventing Corruption went ahead and launched the uncertified system on Aug. 15. As a result, punishing officials for lying in declarations became impossible, since evidence from the uncertified system will be inadmissible by the courts. Moreover, officials will be able to hide and legalize their corrupt wealth.
The failure is likely to prevent further Western aid to Ukraine.
As the scandal escalated, the National Agency for Preventing Corruption on Aug. 18 postponed the launch until Sept. 1. The system is expected to be certified by the State Service for Government Communications by then.
However, those responsible for sabotaging the launch have not been fired.
Poroshenko, head of the National Agency for Preventing Corruption Natalia Korchak, and head of the State Agency for Government Communications Leonid Yevdochenko, have been blamed for the fiasco, although they deny responsibility. Korchak and Yevdochenko are protégés of Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.
Leshchenko said on Aug. 17 that “the Presidential Administration has done its best for two years to make sure there is no criminal responsibility for lying in declarations.”
“This was the fifth attempt to kill electronic declarations. I hope that the president and his entourage will not try to kill them once again (on Sept. 1), because a sixth attempt will lead to economic collapse and bury the dream of a visa-free regime,” Shabunin said.
