Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has disbanded the units that charged top allies of President Petro Poroshenko with embezzlement and money laundering, Kostyantyn Kulik, the prosecutor who issued the notices of suspicion for them, told the Kyiv Post on April 30.
Kulik said that the high profile investigations unit and the prosecution unit of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s international legal cooperation department had been disbanded. He alleged that in this way, Lutsenko was taking revenge for the notices of suspicion being issued against Poroshenko’s allies.
Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan did not respond by phone, while Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, did not respond to a written request for comment.
Kulik, who had been a deputy head of the international legal cooperation department and head of the department’s prosecution unit, said that his job no longer existed.
He also said that due to the disbanding of the units, major corruption investigations against ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies had been halted.
Journalist Volodymyr Boyko posted a copy of Lutsenko’s order to disband the units.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko’s order to liquidate two units at the Prosecutor General’s Office (Volodymyr Boyko).
In March, Kulik issued notices of suspicion against Valeria Gontareva, the former head of the National Bank of Ukraine, Kostyantyn Stetsenko, a top executive at investment bank ICU, Poroshenko’s former Chief of Staff Borys Lozhkin, and his Deputy Chief of Staff Oleksiy Filatov.
However, Sargan, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, said in March that the leadership of her agency believed the notices of suspicion to be unlawful and invalid.
Sergii Gorbatuk, head of the in absentia cases unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office, told the Kyiv Post that the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office had no right to cancel notices of suspicion issued by prosecutors.
Anti-corruption activists, including Reanimation Package of Reforms expert Oleksandr Lemenov, said Sargan’s statement indicated that Lutsenko wanted to save the allies of his political boss Poroshenko.
On April 11, Kulik alleged that Poroshenko had illegally interfered in the case against his allies.
Poroshenko denied the accusations on April 11. He claimed that Kulik had gone to Israel, where tycoon Igor Kolomoisky lives, and decided to take part in the oligarch’s political activities. Kolomoisky denied meeting Kulik.
Kulik also denied traveling to Israel and meeting Kolomoisky. He in turn accused Lutsenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky, a top Poroshenko ally, of blocking investigations against Kolomoisky. Lutsenko’s office and Hranovsky did not respond to requests for comment.
But a day after the April 21 run-off of the Ukrainian presidential election, in which comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy beat Poroshenko, the Prosecutor General’s Office issued summonses to the Poroshenko allies.
The suspects were to be questioned and charged on April 23 and April 25.
However, Filatov and Lozhkin said they would not go to the questioning, arguing that the publication of the summonses through the Internet was illegal. Gontareva, who lives in London, also said she would not come, while Stetsenko declined to comment.
Gontareva and Stetsenko are expected to be charged with aiding organized crime and complicity in embezzling Hr 2 billion ($74 million) by buying and selling government bonds.
Gontareva, Lozhkin and Filatov are also expected to be charged with complicity in laundering over $440 million through the 2013 sale of UMH, a major international media company founded by Lozhkin.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is also planning to charge Yanukovych’s Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky with laundering $36 million.
All of the suspects have previously denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
Kulik has been hit by scandal himself.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine in 2016 charged Kulik with unlawful enrichment of Hr 2 million ($80,000). The case was closed in March after the Constitutional Court in late February canceled a law on illegal enrichment.
