The Verkhovna Rada on March 5 supported the dismissal of Ruslan Riaboshapka as prosecutor general with 263 votes.
Under the law, First Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko must now take over as acting prosecutor general.
The decision to fire Riaboshapka was supported by the Servant of the People; the pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life faction; Za Maibutne (For the Future), a group linked to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, and the Dovira (Trust) group.
Riaboshapka’s fortunes sank after his ally, Andriy Bohdan, was replaced with Andriy Yermak as President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff in February.
Bohdan arranged Riaboshapka’s appointment as prosecutor general in August. The two worked together in the government of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.
Lawmakers from Zelensky’s party also previously considered firing Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). However, it is still unclear whether a vote on sacking Sytnyk will take place.
Zelensky has expressed his dissatisfaction with what he sees as a lack of progress in major investigations, a veiled reference to the performance of Riaboshapka and Sytnyk.
Zelensky was elected as president last April with the slogan “springtime – jailtime,” appealing to the popular demand for the jailing of top corrupt officials. However, as Zelensky’s presidency enters its second spring, no top officials have been convicted and progress in high-profile corruption cases remains slow.
“Spring has come,” Maksym Buzhansky, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party and an ally of Kolomoisky, said in the Rada. “Has anyone been jailed? No.”
Riaboshapka has also faced criticism for what his critics see as a non-transparent prosecution reform and the alleged sabotage of investigations into the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution. He has denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
Allies of Kolomoisky have largely spearheaded the campaign to fire Riaboshapka and Sytnyk. The motions to fire the two men were backed not only by lawmakers from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, but also by controversial members of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform — For Life party. The motion to dismiss Sytnyk also received the support of some allies of ex-President Petro Poroshenko.
Some of those who backed the motions are suspects in corruption investigations.
There are concerns that Riaboshapka may be replaced with a prosecutor general less responsive to civil society and more loyal to oligarchs and top corrupt officials.
The dismissal of Riaboshapka and the potential firing of Sytnyk could also lead to a confrontation with the West. Ambassadors of the G7 group of advanced economies have backed both men and opposed their dismissal.
“(Corrupt officials) see that they can’t resolve some issues with this prosecutor’s office and can’t resolve some issues with the NABU,” Riaboshapka said on March 5. “When the NABU works jointly with the Prosecutor General’s Office, this may lead to unpleasant consequences for certain oligarchs.”
Riaboshapka later also delivered a speech in the Rada and refused to take questions from lawmakers as a sign of protest.
“I did not become anyone’s servant,” Riaboshapka said during his speech. “I was independent. An independent prosecutor cannot be forced to do something. He can only be fired. So I’m leaving. But I’m leaving to come back.”
New prosecutor general
David Arakhamia, head of Zelensky’s party faction in the Rada, said on March 4 that Servant of the People lawmaker Sergii Ionushas has significant support among his fellow party lawmakers as a potential replacement for Riaboshapka.
Ionushas, 39, is a deputy chairman of the Rada’s law enforcement committee.
Ionushas is the former head of the Gelon law firm, which specializes in intellectual property and the registration of trademarks. His firm represented Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 television studio. Ionushas founded Gelon in 2002. There are no mentions of Ionushas or his firm representing clients in criminal cases.
State Investigation Bureau Chief Iryna Venedyktova and controversial prosecutors Serhiy Kiz and Kostyantyn Kulyk have also been rumored to be potential replacements for Riaboshapka or candidates for other top jobs at the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Kulyk, who was fired by Riaboshapka last year, had been charged in an illicit enrichment case and had also led efforts to investigate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. President Donald Trump’s potential rival in the upcoming presidential election.
Kiz made some controversial decisions viewed as sabotage by lawyers for EuroMaidan protesters. Specifically, in August he closed a case against ex-Verkhovna Rada Deputy Speaker Ihor Kaletnik, claiming that he committed no crime. The case involves alleged violations during the adoption of the so-called “dictatorship laws” of Jan. 16, 2014, which would have restricted the right to protest and other civil liberties.
Civil society support
Riaboshapka and Sytnyk were supported by Ukraine’s major civil society watchdogs, including the Anti-Corruption Action Center, Transparency International Ukraine, StateWatch, AutoMaidan, DEJURE, Chesno and others.
“The unlawful dismissal of the NABU’s head and the prosecutor general will imply a rejection of agreements with the International Monetary Fund, which will lead to suspension of lending for Ukraine,” they said in a statement on March 2.
They argued that the motion to dismiss Sytnyk was “unprecedented lawlessness” and “an assault on the bureau’s independence.” They also said that Riaboshapka’s dismissal would lead to the suspension of prosecution reform.
Charges for Poroshenko
Arakhamia said that one of the major reasons for Riaboshapka’s planned dismissal is his reluctance to authorize a notice of suspicion for ex-President Petro Poroshenko.
Lawmaker Buzhansky lashed out at Riaboshapka, calling him “an empty place” and accusing him of serving Poroshenko’s interests.
Poroshenko is under investigation by the State Investigation Bureau and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau in more than a dozen cases. In late February, the Investigation Bureau drafted notices of suspicion for Poroshenko for abuse of power in the appointment of top officials and passed them to Riaboshapka for signing. However, the notices were never signed.
According to the Kyiv Post’s sources inside the Prosecutor General’s Office who weren’t authorized to speak to the press, Riaboshapka rejected the drafts because they were of poor quality and he thought that the cases would fail in court.
Vitaly Tytych, former coordinator of judicial watchdog Public Integrity Council, argued that Riaboshapka was reluctant to sign low-quality notices of suspicion due to potential accusations that the charges are politically motivated. Tytych finds it bizarre, however, that Ukraine’s law enforcement failed to come up with properly drafted notices of suspicion for Poroshenko, who has been out of office for nearly 10 months.
Riaboshapka said he was being pressured politically in an apparent reference to the Poroshenko cases.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office had been a tool of political repression for 28 years,” Riaboshapka said in the Rada. “It was not trusted and was a tool of enrichment… But now the prosecutor’s office complies with the law. This is the reason why the issue of my dismissal has been raised.”
Kolomoisky’s interest
Lawmakers allied with Kolomoisky have led the campaign to oust Riaboshapka and Sytnyk and registered motions to have them dismissed.
Both the Prosecutor General’s Office and the NABU have led an embezzlement case into PrivatBank, which was formerly co-owned by the tycoon, and Sytnyk believes the campaign to be a reprisal against him by Kolomoisky and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
The ostensible reason for the potential firing of Sytnyk is that a court found him guilty of “receiving an unlawful benefit,” a misdemeanor, in September after an acquaintance testified that he paid some Hr 25,000 (today, roughly $1,000) for Sytnyk’s vacations in 2018 and 2019.
However, under Ukrainian law, a misdemeanor cannot be grounds for firing the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Verkhovna Rada members have considered submitting a bill to change the law so that Sytnyk could be fired.
The Rada’s law enforcement committee will consider a law next week to allow the firing of any top officials included in the register of corrupt officials, including those who committed misdemeanors, Oleksandr Dubinsky, a lawmaker from the Servant of the People and an ally of Kolomoisky, said on March 5.
Later the Rada will adopt this law, which will make Sytnyk’s dismissal possible, he added.
Riaboshapka’s reform
Although the drive to fire Riaboshapka has been led by Kolomoisky’s controversial associates, legal experts have also raised legitimate concerns about his performance.
One of the complaints is that Riaboshapka’s vetting of prosecutors, during which 55.5 percent of prosecutors at the central office were fired, lacked transparency. Specifically, the Prosecutor General’s Office has not published videos of interviews with prosecutors and decisions on why specific prosecutors were fired or kept in office.
The Prosecutor General’s Office declined to respond to requests for comment by the Kyiv Post on the reasons for the successful vetting of several controversial prosecutors. It also failed to respond to several complaints on the alleged crimes of the prosecutors submitted by lawyer Tytych.
Vetting commissions have also failed to study the criminal cases pursued by individual prosecutors during their career. Riaboshapka’s opponents argue that this should have been the main criterion for vetting. The vetting commissions argued that they did not have the time and authority to do so.
High-profile cases
Lawyers for EuroMaidan protesters have also accused Riaboshapka of sabotaging cases into the EuroMaidan Revolution.
The main EuroMaidan case – which looks into the murder of 48 protesters in a single day in February 2014 – collapsed after five ex-police officers on trial were released by the Kyiv Court of Appeal in December as part of a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia’s proxies in the Donbas.
A few weeks before that, the department investigating the EuroMaidan cases in the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine was eliminated, and the cases were passed to the State Investigative Bureau. The next blow was dealt in January, when Yanukovych’s former lawyer was appointed as the first deputy chief of the bureau.
Meanwhile, the high-profile obstruction of justice case against prominent Judge Pavlo Vovk appears to have stalled indefinitely since Riaboshapka’s prosecutors failed to send it to trial by the five-day deadline set by a court in November.
Riaboshapka and Avakov have also been criticized for their handling of the case into the killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet in a car explosion in central Kyiv on July 20, 2016.
In December, Riaboshapka, Avakov and Zelensky announced the arrest of suspects in the case. But the police and prosecutors subsequently failed to present any strong evidence for the suspects’ involvement, prompting widespread criticism.
Although Sytnyk is seen by the West and civil society as more independent and effective than other law enforcement officials, some judicial experts have also questioned the quality of his work.
Instead of fulfilling the bureau’s main function – going after the highest-ranking officials and billion-dollar corruption, Sytnyk has mostly targeted lower-level bureaucrats and smaller schemes, lawyer Tytych argued.
He said that Sytnyk “maneuvered between presidents, civil society and the U.S. Embassy” and tried to curry favor with all of them.
