While the investigation into top-level graft at the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, or NAPC, appears to have been blocked, new evidence has emerged that top officials at the agency may have been involved in wrongdoing.
The Kyiv Post has obtained the documents of an audit on which the corruption investigation is based. Meanwhile, Hanna Solomatina, a top NAPC official who has blown the whistle on her own agency’s alleged corruption, on Nov. 24 published what she says is her correspondence with Oleksiy Horashchenkov, the first deputy chief of the Presidential Administration’s department for strategic planning and operating support.
Horashchenkov denied influencing the NAPC, but declined to comment on the correspondence.
The NAPC corruption case on Nov. 28 was transferred on the orders of the Prosecutor General’s Office from the independent National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to the presidentially controlled Security Service of Ukraine, in what critics, including Solomatina, believe to be an effort to undercut the investigation. The NAPC has denied accusations of corruption.
Moreover, no one at the NAPC or the Presidential Administration has been suspended or fired in connection with the graft case.
Cover-up?
The audit of the NAPC work obtained by the Kyiv Post shows that the agency, whose main task is to check the asset declarations of public officials, didn’t succeed in it.
According to the documents, the NAPC picked a number of top officials and lawmakers for check-ups, but then didn’t actually do any work to check them.
Among them were Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko; Radical Party lawmaker Andriy Lozovy; Opposition Bloc lawmakers Nestor Shufrich and Yevhen Balytsky, Samopomich party lawmaker Olena Sotnyk, Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, and Svitlana Pavlyuk, a top official of the State Judicial Administration.
No requests were sent to state bodies, and the checks did not even begin by the time the deadlines for the checks expired.
The audit also found that Danylyuk did not declare Hr 5 million in income in the United Kingdom.
The declarations of Deputy Prime Minister and Regional Development, Construction and Utilities Minister Hennady Zubko, Youth and Sports Minister Ihor Zhdanov and Dmytro But, a deputy chief of the National Police’s main investigative department, were checked incorrectly, according to the audit results.
Zhdanov and his wife co-own the Open Politics foundation, and his wife is also the CEO of the foundation. Anti-corruption law bans officials from allowing their relatives to manage their assets, which constitutes a conflict of interest, but the NAPC’s conclusion on Zhdanov’s declaration did not mention this fact.
Zubko lectures at PAT ZhZOK, a construction firm, and gets Hr 64,000 monthly for the lectures. PAT ZhZOK is co-owned by Zubko and his wife, and its CEO is his son. According to the audit results, this constitutes a conflict of interest but the fact was not mentioned in the NAPC’s conclusion on Zubko.
The Regional Development, Construction and Utilities Ministry declined to comment on the accusations, saying that the NAPC had explained everything about Zubko’s asset declaration.
Meanwhile, the income of Deputy Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kyrylenko and his family might not match his expenses. Kyrylenko’s family has declared a 900-square-meter house.
A source close to the NAPC told the Kyiv Post that another minister whose declaration was not properly checked is Energy Minister Ihor Nasalik, and there were enough grounds to send materials on Nasalik to the NABU for a potential criminal case. The source spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
According to his alleged correspondence with Solomatina, who is the head of the NAPC’s department for financial and lifestyle monitoring, Horashchenkov wrote that “work is under way on Nasalik.”
In many cases, two or three conclusions were prepared for one asset declaration check, with some of them being positive and others negative, according to the audit’s results. The implication is that the positive conclusions were sold to officials to help them escape prosecution.
The audit also found that the asset declarations of some candidates for Supreme Court jobs were not checked properly because they contained no reference to the State Fiscal Service’s register. Moreover, the audit committee was prevented from auditing the rest of the Supreme Court candidates’ declaration checks.
Implicated
According to the audit, the conclusions on checks of the declarations of candidates for government jobs with alleged violations were signed by Ruslan Radetzky, a member of the NAPC’s management board, and Serhiy Bohachov, a deputy chief of staff of the NAPC. Radetzky has denied accusations of wrongdoing, and Bohachov couldn’t be reached for comment.
Conclusions on checks of the declarations of incumbent officials with alleged violations were first voted on by the NAPC’s management board, including NAPC Chief Natalia Korchak, Oleksandr Skopych, Rouslan Riaboshapka and Radetzky, and then signed by Korchak, who also denies accusations of corruption.
Many of the declaration checks with alleged violations were conducted by Tetiana Shkrebko, a deputy head of the NAPC’s department for financial and lifestyle monitoring, and Lyudmila Lozenko and Yaroslav Onoprienko, lower-level officials of the department.
Shkrebko had been convicted in a corruption case before being hired by the NAPC.
Oleksandr Pysarenko, the NAPC’s head of the conflict of interest department and acting chief of staff, has consistently failed to notice any conflicts of interests in asset declarations, according to the audit.
In 2014 Pysarenko, then acting head of the State Agency for Ecological Investment, found himself at the center of a corruption scandal and was fired after he awarded a Hr 30 million contract to a firm called Intertekhenergo in spite of a competing bid worth Hr 10 million. Intertekhenergo was linked to Yury Ivanyushchenko, a controversial ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, and the Svoboda party, according to the Nashi Hroshi investigative project.
Meanwhile, Korchak and other members of the NAPC’s management board are under investigation over allegedly receiving an Hr 1 million bribe from a lawmaker for falsifying an asset declaration.
Solomatina on Nov. 24 published what she says is text message correspondence with Horashchenkov in which he attempts to give her orders.
According to the alleged correspondence, Horashchenkov told Solomatina to crack down on Batkivshchyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko and Opposition Bloc lawmaker Vadym Rabinovych. Horashchenkov also allegedly told Solomatina to prepare three versions of a conclusion on NABU Deputy Chief Gizo Uglava’s asset declaration.
Meanwhile, the NAPC has found no violations in Horashchenkov’s asset declaration. However, he could have violated anti-corruption law by indicating his 591 square meter luxury house in Kyiv as “under construction” despite living in it, according to the Schemes investigative show.
“You should start an attack on Yulia (Tymoshenko) and Rabynovych as soon as possible,” Horashchenkov allegedly told Solomatina.
Transfer to SBU
Solomatina told the Kyiv Post that she had decided to publish the alleged correspondence with Horashchenkov because she was afraid the State Security Service, or SBU, which took the case from the NABU, would take her phone away and destroy the evidence.
The SBU did not respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko cited NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk’s alleged conflict of interest as the reason for the transfer of the case to the SBU, because the bureau is investigating Korchak over an undeclared Skoda Octavia A7 car.
The transfer of the case to the SBU is deemed by critics to be an effort to bury the investigation, since the SBU is controlled by the Presidential Administration, which was accused by Solomatina of influencing the NAPC.
Solomatina on Nov. 18 lambasted Lutsenko for the decision, saying that the transfer of the case to the SBU would constitute a conflict of interest, because her testimony implicates Serhiy Karpushin, an SBU official who is also an advisor to Korchak.
She said that before going public with the accusations, she brought them to the Prosecutor General’s Office. But Karpushin, who was supposed to transfer her documents to the Prosecutor General’s Office, effectively blocked the transfer and returned them to the NAPC, she said.
Horashchenkov also mentions the SBU’s interference with asset declaration checks in his alleged correspondence with Solomatina.
The State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection, which manages the NAPC’s asset declaration register, was created in 2006 out of an SBU department and is still reportedly closely linked to the SBU.
Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, said on Nov. 23 that the SBU also has a conflict of interest because the NAPC has allowed all SBU officials to make their declarations secret in what critics see as an effort to hide corrupt wealth.
Sergii Gorbatuk, head of the in absentia investigations unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office, and lawyer Vitaly Tytych told the Kyiv Post that they believe the transfer of the case to the SBU was illegal, because only a specific NABU detective, not the agency as a whole, can have a conflict of interest.
Procedural codes
In another development that deals a major blow to the NABU and all high-profile criminal investigations, President Petro Poroshenko on Nov. 22 signed controversial amendments to procedural codes. The text of the amendments only became known on Nov. 24.
The amendments could make any criminal investigations very difficult or even impossible, according to lawyer Vitaly Tytych and the NABU. The authorities have denied the accusations, touting the amendments as a major judicial reform aimed at protecting suspects’ rights.
Under the amendments, investigators will have to file a notice of suspicion within one-and-a-half years for grave crimes, and one year for crimes of medium severity. After filing a notice of suspicion, prosecutors will have to send it to trial within two months.
The courts will be able to block investigations by refusing to extend their terms, and their decisions to close cases cannot be appealed.
According to the amendments, corruption cases can also be blocked through appeals against notices of suspicion.
“I had to explain the situation with (then NAPC Chief of Staff) Igor (Tkachenko) and you to the president on Saturday because he personally voiced complaints to me about a governor and some complaints about Igor’s sphere,” Horashchenkov allegedly wrote to Solomatina. “I also named the dates of his resignation and yours, as agreed.”
