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The in absentia cases department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which investigates the murders of more than 100 participants of the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution and other cases, has been liquidated, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on July 11.
The investigative unit of the in absentia cases department, headed by outspoken prosecutor Sergii Gorbatuk, will be transformed into a new department.
The prosecution unit of the in absentia cases department will be merged into the department for State Investigation Bureau cases, headed by Serhiy Kiz, a protégé of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
Several other departments of the prosecutor’s office were also liquidated.
Gorbatuk attributed the liquidation of his department to his criticism of the authorities’ alleged shady dealings with ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s associates.
The Prosecutor General’s Office denied the accusations of retribution. Instead, the office said the restructuring was in line with the concept of separating investigative and prosecution functions. However, the separation of investigative and prosecution functions affected only Gorbatuk’s unit and several other units, and other units were left alone so far.
Larysa Sargan, Lutsenko’s spokeswoman, told the Kyiv Post that all employees of Gorbatuk’s unit would keep their jobs, and Gorbatuk could apply to become the head of the unit to which his department’s investigators were transferred. However, he will not be able to head the prosecutors of his former unit.
“If Sergii Viktorovich (Gorbatuk) decides to freak out, maybe he won’t apply,” she said.
Gorbatuk said previously that, by controlling the prosecutors, Lutsenko would be able to control and interfere in EuroMaidan investigations, and it would not matter who heads the investigative unit.
Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post on July 11 that he had not received any job offers and that he had not decided whether he would stay at the Prosecutor General’s Office. “How can I work with these frauds in the future?” he said.
He also said that the investigators and prosecutors of his department could refuse to be transferred if their new bosses had a controversial reputation.
“(The leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office) have become sick and tired of us because we’re not allowing them to reach political bargains in our cases,” Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post on June 23.
The lawyers of EuroMaidan protesters said on June 25 that the liquidation of Gorbatuk’s unit “will lead to the collapse of EuroMaidan investigations.”
“We believe that the purpose of this liquidation is getting rid of an independent and critical subordinate – department head Sergii Gorbatuk, as well as of independent investigators and prosecutors,” the lawyers said in a group statement. “Another aim for the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office is to micromanage cases in which it has an interest.”
Gorbatuk’s unit was set up in 2014 with civil society’s support to make sure that the crucial EuroMaidan cases are investigated.
According to the liquidation plan, prosecutors from Gorbatuk’s unit and other units will be overseen by Deputy Prosecutor General Yuriy Stolyarchuk, while investigators from the in absentia cases unit and other units will be supervised by Deputy Prosecutor General Anzhela Stryzhevska, Gorbatuk said earlier.
The plans to liquidate Gorbatuk’s department were first announced in June days after Gorbatuk and one of his subordinates, Andriy Radionov, said that Stryzhevska and Deputy Prosecutor General Eugene Enin had no right to negotiate with Yanukovych’s Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky as part of the Hr 540 million embezzlement case against him.
Enin and Stryzhevska met with Stavytsky in 2016 in a hotel in Tel Aviv in Israel to negotiate the charges against him, according to an audio recording of the meeting leaked to Slidstvo.Info and published on June 9. They said in the recording they were acting on Lutsenko’s orders.
The recording implies that the investigators could have conspired with the ex-minister, who has been wanted for embezzlement since 2014, in a backroom deal to soften the charges against him.
The Prosecutor General’s Office, Enin and Stryzhevska said the meeting was part of a due process of negotiation with the suspect.
But Andriy Radionov, an investigator in the Stavytsky case, and Gorbatuk contradicted them, saying that Stryzhevska and Enin had no right to represent the investigation.
The journalists also released an audio recording of a call between a man sounding like Stavytsky and an unidentified mediator, whom he refers to as “Kolya.” They discuss the future meeting with Stryzhevska, and “Kolya” says he will offer her “200” – presumably a bribe of $200,000.
Gorbatuk claimed that after the Stavytsky case was taken away from his department in 2016, Stryzhevska had been trying to persuade the investigators and prosecutors to change the charges to negligence. They “were negotiating to change the charges to minimal ones,” Gorbatuk said. “They are also in talks on compensating a certain part of the losses and putting another part in their pockets.”
However, the charges were unchanged. The case was sent to court in May with the original charges – embezzlement and money laundering.
Gorbatuk said that apparently they had failed to reach a final deal with Stavytsky so far. However, they might change the charges or reach a plea bargain during the trial, he added.
