The Prosecutor General’s Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating a criminal case against Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in an interview on Ukraine’s ICTV television channel late on March 26.
A source who was not authorized to speak to he press told the Kyiv Post that the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office had been allegedly recorded by the NABU promising to a suspect that it would transfer a case to the police in exchange for a bribe.
NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk said on March 21 that previous reports of Kholodnytsky being wiretapped had been “distorted” and resembled “science fiction.” He did not give any details, however.
The Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper reported on March 21 that wiretapping equipment had been installed by the NABU in an aquarium in Kholodnytsky’s office more than a month ago.
The prosecutor who oversees the NABU investigation into Kholodnytsky is Volodymyr Hutsulyak, who heads a unit accused of having ties to President Petro Poroshenko’s top lawmakers Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky, according to Ukrainska Pravda. Kononenko and Hranovsky deny influencing the unit.
Ukrainska Pravda also reported on March 20 that Kholodnytsky was considering resigning. His office did not respond to a request for comment.
The NABU hopes that, if Kholodnytsky resigns, his first deputy Maksym Hryshchuk will become the acting chief anti-corruption prosecutor, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources.
However, the Prosecutor General’s Office believes that Prosecutor General Lutsenko should effectively become the acting chief anti-corruption prosecutor after Kholodnytsky’s resignation, taking direct control over the NABU, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources at the Prosecutor General’s Office.
When Kholodnytsky was the first deputy chief prosecutor of Crimea in 2014 to 2015, prosecutors of the Crimea prosecutor’s office were arrested and investigated over allegedly extorting a bribe for releasing a suspect. The Kyiv-based Crimea prosecutor’s office investigates crimes linked to Russian-annexed Crimea.
The reports come in the wake of a long-running conflict between Sytnyk and Kholodnytsky, who has been accused of blocking NABU investigations and being influenced by the Presidential Administration. He denies the accusations.
However, Lutsenko may also be interested in getting rid of Kholodnytsky due to the latter’s alleged ambitions of becoming the prosecutor general himself, according to media reports.
The reports on Lutsenko potentially getting direct control over the NABU also follow numerous attempts by the authorities to restrict the bureau’s independence.
A bill that could potentially block the investigative activities of the NABU was submitted to parliament on March 19 by lawmaker Nina Yuzhanina of the 135-member Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction.
The legislation would create a presidentially controlled National Financial Security Bureau, which will be able to investigate the embezzlement of government funds under Article 191-1, overlapping with high-profile cases of the NABU, and replacing the State Fiscal Service’s notoriously corrupt tax police.
As a result, Lutsenko would have powers to take major cases away from the NABU and transfer them to the National Financial Security Bureau, helping corrupt officials escape justice, according to Zlata Simonenko, a law enforcement expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms. Lutsenko has already used his authority to take cases away from the NABU.
In November, a case on alleged corruption at the National Agency for Preventing Corruption was transferred – on the orders of Lutsenko and Kholodnytsky – from the independent NABU to the presidentially controlled Security Service of Ukraine, a move that critics believe to be an effort to destroy the case.
Top NAPC officials Hanna Solomatina and Oksana Divnich said in November that the agency was involved in large-scale corruption and completely controlled by the Presidential Administration. The NAPC and the Presidential Administration denied the accusations.
Meanwhile, in December pro-government lawmakers submitted a bill that would enable parliament to fire Sytnyk without an audit of his performance, eliminating the bureau’s independence. The bill was later removed from the agenda after Western criticism.
The pro-Poroshenko majority in the Rada also fired Yegor Sobolev, a staunch defender of the NABU, as chairman of parliament’s anti-corruption committee in December.
In November, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine disrupted a NABU corruption investigation into the State Migration Service by publishing the personal data of NABU undercover agents, blowing their cover. The agents were arrested and charged with provoking an official to take a bribe, which the NABU denies.
Pro-government lawmakers have also repeatedly tried to appoint loyal auditors in order to control and potentially fire Sytnyk.
