Ukraine’s authorities are attempting to clear the name of Yuriy Boyko, the former energy minister and leader of the Opposition Bloc in parliament, so that he can aid them in upcoming elections, anti-corruption activists have claimed.
Sergii Leshchenko, a reformist lawmaker and a fierce critic of the President Petro Poroshenko, wrote in his blog on Feb. 12 that the Prosecutor General’s Office “fails to fulfill the public’s request for justice” by not prosecuting members of the past and current political elite.
As an example, Leshchenko pointed to the case of Boyko, who has been accused of corrupt dealings worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“(The Prosecutor General’s Office) has been used to go after unwanted politicians and also act in a conspiracy to achieve the desired result in the elections,” Leshchenko said, adding that Boyko is “an ideal competitor for Petro Poroshenko” for the second round of the presidential elections in 2019. “Therefore, the authorities decided not just to leave Boyko alone, but to cozy up to him.”
Leshchenko was echoing comments made earlier by Vitaliy Shabunin, who heads the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, and who is a prominent anti-corruption activist. Shabunin said he was certain that Poroshenko needs Boyko as a “technical candidate” – a candidate who runs in an election not for the purpose of winning, but to help another candidate to win.
“After all, it is Boyko who’s probably the only candidate Poroshenko could beat. That’s why there will be neither a notice of suspicion for Boyko nor his arrest until the presidential election at least,” Shabunin said.
Shabunin’s accusations of selective justice came after Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko reported on Feb. 2 that there was no evidence that Boyko was involved in corruption schemes involving state oil and gas company Chornomornaftogaz.
In 2011, the state purchased two oil and gas rigs worth $400 million each through a shady intermediary, while the same ones from the supplier, Keppel Corporation, sold for only $250 million each. Boyko has denied any wrongdoing and told journalists that the $150 million difference was spent on extra equipment for the rigs.
“(Yuriy) Boyko has not been a suspect since the opening of this criminal case,” Lutsenko was quoted as saying at a news conference in Kyiv on Feb. 2. “He was questioned and will be questioned. Now we have no direct evidence of his participation, except for one element when he signed changes to a financial plan… At the moment we have no evidence that he… received funds obtained by criminal means,”
The company that sold the rigs to Chornomornaftogaz was Highway Investments Processing LLP, whose owners made an impressive $300 million on the deal. The money was allegedly laundered through Latvian bank Trasta Komercbanka.
But the case, which has become famous as that of “Boyko’s Drilling Rigs” might be renamed after ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, as the Prosecutor General’s Office now believes that it was Yanukovych and former National Bank of Ukraine Governor Serhiy Arbuzov who were the ultimate beneficiaries of the deal. The rigs were later seized by Russian following its invasion of Crimea in early 2014.
Tetiana Chornovil, a former investigative journalist and member of parliament with the People’s Front faction, backed Lutsenko’s claim, saying that in 2012 she received documents proving that the company that participated in the procurement tender for Chornomornaftogaz was related to offshore companies that owned Yanukovych’s summer house in Crimea.
Shabunin himself has become a target of the law enforcement and now faces up to five years in prison, rather than three, when prosecutors altered the charges against him for an alleged assault on Vsevolod Filimonenko, an aide to member of parliament Serhiy Melnychuk and a reporter for the Glas Naroda website. The change in the charges reflects the fact that assaulting a journalist carries a heavier sentence.
Civil watchdogs claim the case against Shabunin is a part of the authorities’ continuing attacks on anti-graft activists in Ukraine, and have pointed out that dozens of other attacks against journalists remain uninvestigated.
