Ukraine’s newly established anti-graft agencies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine or NABU and the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, have clashed in recent days, and are now involved in a major standoff.
The latest shot in the current conflict between the two agencies came on Nov. 13, when the National Agency for Preventing Corruption sent an administrative case against NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk to trial, accusing him of a conflict of interest, missing deadlines for submitting documents and information, and failing to fully provide information to the agency.
The agency argued that Sytnyk had a conflict of interest when he gave a power of attorney to Igor Yarchak, head of the NABU’s legal department, and accused Yarchak of representing Sytnyk’s private interests in court.
The NABU denied all of the agency’s accusations.
Sytnyk attributed the recent conflict with the agency to the authorities’ alleged attempts to restrict or destroy his bureau.
“One would have to be very naïve not to realize that the government will not forgive us for the cases that were are investigating, and will not leave us alone,” Sytnyk told Channel 5 on Nov. 13, mentioning graft cases against ex-People’s Front party lawmaker Mykola Martynenko, State Fiscal Service Chief Roman Nasirov and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov’s son Oleksandr. “We were expecting a media attack on us with the use of loyal agencies like the National Agency for Preventing Corruption. I don’t rule out that they will further use their administrative resources such as notices of suspicion and arrests (against the NABU).”
While the NABU is believed to be relatively independent from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the National Agency for Preventing Corruption has been accused of being under Poroshenko’s full control, which it denies.
The NABU in turn accused Natalia Korchak, head of the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, of a conflict of interest, interpreting her attack on the NABU as revenge for the bureau’s corruption case against her.
The present conflict erupted on Nov. 10, when a NABU detective came to serve a summons to Korchak’s mother-in-law Nadiya Timer-Bulatova, for questioning in a graft case, the NABU said.
Timer-Bulatova said she wished to be interrogated in the apartment and was questioned by the detective, according to the NABU. But later Korchak’s mother-in-law shut the door and did not let the detective leave her apartment for a while, calling the police and journalists, the NABU said.
The NABU published video footage of the detective and Timer-Bulatova in which the detective confirms the bureau’s narrative.
The police later said they had opened a case into Timer-Bulatova’s claim that the NABU detective had illegally broken into her apartment.
Korchak claimed on Nov. 11 that her mother-in-law thought the detective was a criminal and that it is why she called the police and did not let him leave the apartment. Korchak also claimed that the detective had committed numerous procedural violations.
The NABU denies the accusations.
The questioning was related to a NABU investigation into a Skoda Octavia A7 car that was allegedly not declared by Korchak. The NABU said it had summoned Korchak for an interrogation as a witness, but she failed to appear.
Meanwhile, Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky has been trying to take the Korchak case away from the NABU, Daria Manzhura, head of the bureau’s press office, told the Kyiv Post. Kholodnytsky has been repeatedly accused of being influenced by Poroshenko, which he denies.
The NABU has opened graft cases against multiple top officials.
In contrast, the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, which is deemed loyal to the authorities, has failed to pursue cases against any major bureaucrats or politicians.
The agency has found punishable violations only in several minor officials’ electronic asset declarations, including the mayor of a small city, while claiming that not a single minister or top official had violated the asset declaration law.
Meanwhile, reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko wrote on Nov. 8 that the Prosecutor General’s Office was scheduled to transfer cases against top officials of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych to the NABU on Nov. 20 under a recently passed law. Using this transfer, the authorities will try to “bury” the NABU with cases and discredit it, since the bureau does not have enough resources to investigate them, and they will have to start everything from scratch, he added.
Since the leadership of the NABU can be fired as a result of an audit, Poroshenko has been accused of trying to install auditors loyal to him so that he can control the bureau.
Yegor Sobolev, the opposition-minded head of parliament’s anti-corruption committee, said on Nov. 13 the pro-Poroshenko majority wanted to dismiss him from the position in order to appoint loyal auditors and restrict the NABU’s independence.
In July the pro-government majority in the Verkhovna Rada unsuccessfully tried to install lawyer Oleksandra Yanovska as an auditor of the NABU. In May Mykhailo Buromensky, an alleged loyalist of the authorities, was appointed as a NABU auditor by the Cabinet of Ministers.
In February, the pro-Poroshenko majority unsuccessfully tried to push through parliament the appointment of another loyalist, Briton Nigel Brown, as a NABU auditor, without the anti-corruption committee’s approval. Brown on July 12 admitted that he had been invited to parliament for the vote on his candidacy by Artur Herasimov, the head of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction.
British authorities have investigated Brown on suspicion of bribing a police officer on behalf of a Russian client and buying secret police information. His company has also provided security services to Russian exiled oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, and received 6 million British pounds from Russian nationals’ offshore firms, according to The Times and Radio Liberty.
The Poroshenko Bloc has also unsuccessfully tried to pass legislation to restrict the NABU’s powers.
