President Petro Poroshenko appointed former Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Zhebrivsky as the third auditor of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
Anti-corruption organizations claim Zhebrivsky is ineligible for this position since he doesn’t have relevant work experience and has been a longstanding associate of Poroshenko. Although Zhebrivsky served in top-level government positions and in the parliament, he doesn’t have a background in foreign law enforcement, judicial agencies or international organizations, as required by the law.
His appointment is illegitimate, says the Anti-Corruption Action Center, or ANTAC, and can be challenged in court. “If such experience won’t be substantiated by documents, we will file a collective lawsuit from public anti-graft organizations,” ANTAC lawyer Olena Shcherban said on June 20.
The impartiality of Zhebrivsky is also in question, the Public Control Council to the NABU said in a statement released on June 20, since he was subject to NABU investigations as a top government official. He resigned as governor of Donetsk Oblast less than two weeks ago.
According to ANTAC head Vitaly Shabunin, the president boosted the political career of Zebrivsky, a former police patrol guard. In the early 2000s, Zhebrivsky was Poroshenko’s first deputy in the Solidarity party. Then he became the governor of his native Zhytomyr Oblast and later entered the parliament, where he was a member of the committee for state budget issues.
After Russia started its war against Ukraine in the Donbas in 2014 after seizing Crimea, Zhebrivsky joined the Ukrainian army. After demobilization in 2015, he was appointed as chief of the general prosecutor’s department for investigations of corruption involving high-ranking officials. Shortly afterwards, he became governor of the Donetsk Oblast administration on Ukraine-controlled parts of the oblast.
Zhebrivsky told LB.ua website that his experience was sufficient to be a NABU auditor.
“I was an investigator, worked in the prosecutor’s office, and was a member of Ukrainian parliamentary delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe between 2007 – 2012,” he said on June 20.
Member of parliament Sergii Leshchenko also objected to the appointment. “Violating the law isn’t a problem for the incumbent president,” he wrote on Facebook on June 20. “The desire for reprisal against NABU is stronger than an instinct for self-preservation.”
Attacks on NABU
Established in 2014 at the insistence of Ukraine’s Western donors, NABU has investigated high-profile corruption cases against powerful suspects, including ex-chief of the State Fiscal Service Roman Nasirov and former member of parliament Mykola Martynenko.
However, since last November, NABU has come under fire from the Security Service of Ukraine and the General Prosecutor’s Office. The inter-agency fights have led to a criminal case against NABU chief Artem Sytnyk, a development viewed by his supporters as political persecution to thwart his agency’s anti-corruption investigations.
While NABU is independent of other state bodies, its leadership can be dismissed based on the results of an independent audit by three auditors. That’s why anti-graft activists see the appointment of Zhebrivsky as an attempt to seize control over the bureau and fire its chief Sytnyk. NABU auditors will also have access to the materials of ongoing criminal investigations and will be able to interview bureau staff.
Anti-corruption court
The future of NABU cases is also at risk with the new law that would create an independent anti-corruption court. The bill drafted by Poroshenko after months of delays was eventually passed by the parliament on June 7.
However, the International Monetary Fund, which demanded an establishment of the anti-corruption court to unlock the delayed next tranche to Ukraine from the $17.5 billion loan package, said the law needs amendments.
Earlier, ANTAC revealed a loophole in the adopted law which will leave appeals in the ongoing NABU cases to existing courts of appeal, not the anti-corruption court.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde spoke to Poroshenko and encouraged a change in the law.
“We agreed that it is now important for parliament to quickly approve <…> necessary amendments to restore the requirement that the court will adjudicate all cases under its jurisdiction, including all appeals of relevant first instance court decisions, as it was in the draft law approved in the first reading,” Lagarde said in a statement issued on June 19.
Who are the other two auditors?
Zhebrivsky, 56, becomes the last member of the NABU auditors troika, joining lawyers Mykhailo Buromensky, an appointee of the Cabinet of Ministers, and Volodymyr Vasylenko, appointed by the Verkhovna Rada.
Buromensky, 61, is a professor at the international law department of Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University and heads the Ukrainian delegation to GRECO, the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption monitoring body. In the past, he served as an ad hoc judge with the European Court for Human Rights.
Human rights lawyer and former diplomat Volodymyr Vasylenko, 81, served as an ambassador of Ukraine to Benelux countries and the United Kingdom and was a representative to the European Union and NATO. Throughout the 2000s, he worked as a member of various United Nations committees, was a judge in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and a Ukraine envoy to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Anti-corruption activists suspect that Vasylenko might also be a pro-Poroshenko delegate. His son, Andriy Vasylenko, is a member of the High Qualification Commission for the selection of judges in a judicial reform designed by Poroshenko. Since 2015, Vasylenko is a member of the constitutional commission, an auxiliary body established and approved by Poroshenko.
