Embattled General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko offered to resign on Nov. 6 in the wake of the death of anti-corruption campaigner Kateryna Gandziuk, but parliament wouldn’t hear of it.
Lutsenko made the offer while he was speaking at parliamentary hearings on the death of Kherson activist Gandziuk two days before. Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy called a vote immediately after Lutsenko’s speech on whether the Rada should consider the general prosecutor’s resignation – even though Lutsenko hadn’t yet submitted an official letter of resignation, as parliamentary protocol demands.
The outcome of the vote was predictable, as Lutsenko is a firm loyalist of President Petro Poroshenko, whose Bloc of Petro Poroshenko is the largest faction in parliament and the controlling force in the parliamentary coalition: Only 38 lawmakers voted to consider Lutsenko’s resignation, with 226 votes needed for an ordinary vote in parliament to pass.
Before the vote, the representative of the president in parliament, lawmaker Iryna Herashenko of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, told the Rada that the coalition wouldn’t support Lutsenko’s resignation.
Lawmaker Yehor Sobolev, of the 25-member Samopomich faction, wrote on Facebook that the whole process of Lutsenko’s resignation had been an act. According to Sobolev, Lutsenko’s offer to resign had been fake, as he hadn’t submitted an official letter of resignation to the Rada, as required for parliament to legitimately approve his resignation.
During his emotional speech to parliament, the general prosecutor said he felt as if some anti-corruption activists were “tying his hands,” in the Gandziuk case.
Parts of General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko’s
expletive-laden speech to parliament on Nov. 6, 2018.
They are “free to take my place,” he said.
Gandzuik, a local council member who worked to uncover corruption in Kherson, a city 550 kilometers south of Kyiv, was attacked with acid on July 31. She received severe burns to her head and body and was hospitalized until her death on Nov 4. Investigators have so far failed to identify who may have ordered the attack.
Earlier, on Nov. 5, a total of 77 non-government organizations, including Transparency International Ukraine and Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, issued a statement deploring the state of the investigation into Gandzuik’s murder, and demanding Lutsenko’s resignation. In the statement, the general prosecutor was also criticized for the state’s failure to solve cases of other recent attacks on journalists and activists.
The most notable cases that have gone unsolved during Lutsenko’s tenure are those of the mass killings during the EuroMaidan Revolution the death of Pavlo Sheremet, a renowned journalist, in a car-bombing in downtown Kyiv in July 2016.
Other cases currently in court have dragged on for years, with some suspects being released or receiving minimum sentences.
The case of journalist Vyacheslav Veremiy, who was beaten and fatally shot on Feb. 19, 2014 after he tried to take a picture of armed men, is still being heard in court. Yuriy Krysin, one of the attackers, initially received a four-year suspended sentence. After a huge public outcry, the ruling was eventually overturned, with Krysin receiving a five-year custodial sentence. Krysin has appealed against the latest sentence.
In another notable case, one of the men who savagely beat lawmaker Tatyana Chornovol in 2014, when she was an activist, was sentenced to five years in prison only on Oct. 25 this year. Two more suspects are still awaiting trial, and another is yet to be apprehended.
