Instead of investigating major corruption and high-profile murders, Ukraine’s law enforcers are taking revenge on anti-graft activists and opposition politicians by opening dubious cases.
In all these 10 criminal cases, law enforcement agencies deny accusations of political motives.
Mikheil Saakashvili
The Kyiv Court of Appeal on Jan. 26 placed ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a vehement opponent of Poroshenko, under nighttime house arrest in a criminal case.
Lutsenko has accused Saakashvili of accepting funding from Serhiy Kurchenko, an ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, to finance anti-government demonstrations and plot a coup d’etat.
The prosecutors’ alleged evidence against Saakashvili was dismissed by independent lawyers as weak, and he was released from custody by Pechersk Court Judge Larysa Tsokol on Dec. 11.
Tsokol ruled that Saakashvili’s detention by the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, without a court warrant and any other legal grounds on Dec. 5 was unlawful. Still, the case against him goes on.
Apart from that, Saakashvili has been fighting against his possible extradition or deportation to Georgia or another country. In July, he got stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship, which he only got two years earlier by an order of Poroshenko.
Saakashvili applied for political asylum to prevent deportation, but was rejected.
The Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal will consider on Feb. 5 Saakashvili’s appeal against the rejection of his asylum application. Saakashvili says the rejection could trigger his unlawful deportation or extradition.
Saakashvili’s lawyers argue that their client cannot be legally deported or extradited regardless of his asylum status, because it is unlawful to deport or extradite permanent stateless residents of Ukraine. It is also unlawful to deport or extradite Saakashvili because he is under investigation in a Ukrainian criminal case, they say.
One of Saakashvili’s associates, Severion Dangadze, is under arrest in the same case.
Moreover, five Saakashvili supporters have been charged in criminal cases linked to what the authorities believe to be his illegal crossing of the border in September. One of them, Oleksandr Burtsev, is under arrest, while another suspect is under house arrest.
Timur Nishnianidze, another Saakashvili associate, has been charged in a different criminal case.
In October and November, seven Georgian associates of Saakashvili were also deported to Georgia by Ukrainian authorities without court warrants, with the Georgians claiming they had been kidnapped and beaten. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.
Human Rights Ombudsman Valeria Lutkovska said in November that three of the Georgians had been illegally kidnapped and deported by the National Police without court warrants. The authorities denied accusations of wrongdoing, but failed to present the legal grounds for the deportations.
Olha Halabala, a top official of Saakashvili’s party, said in December that 450 activists linked to the ex-president were under investigation in various criminal cases.
Vitaly Shabunin
Kyiv’s Dnipro Court on Jan. 30 held the first hearing in a criminal case against Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board.
Shabunin is accused of beating blogger Vsevolod Filimonenko, an aide to pro-government lawmaker Serhiy Melnychuk. He can be convicted for up to five years in jail.
Shabunin admits hitting Filimonenko as payback for him insulting a female colleague but says that Filimonenko did not sustain any serious injuries and falsified a medical examination, which was denied by Filimonenko.
Meanwhile, lawyer Roman Maselko, a member of the Public Integrity Council, argued that the High Council of Justice was trying to influence the Shabunin case through a probe against Dnipro
Court Chief Nelli Lastovka, who is accused of links to top Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky and denies the ties.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center also said on Jan. 23 that a separate tax evasion case against the anti-graft watchdog had been transferred to the Cherkasy Oblast prosecutor’s office.
Maselko told the Kyiv Post the authorities are trying to influence Volodymyr Babenko, chairman of Cherkasy Oblast’s Court of Appeal, in this case against the Anti-Corruption Action Center, through a probe against him. In 2015 Serhiy Bondarenko, a judge of the court, released a recording of Babenko pressuring him to make an unlawful decision in 2013.
In 2016 discredited then Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin also opened an embezzlement case against the Anti-Corruption Action Center, which was highly critical of Shokin.
Sergii Leshchenko
In 2016 prosecutors opened an unlawful enrichment case into the purchase of a $281,000 apartment by Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker and anti-corruption crusader, but later closed it due to the absence of a crime.
In 2017 a court also rejected the National Agency for Preventing Corruption’s attempt to fine Leshchenko, finding him not guilty of violating the anti-corruption law by purchasing the apartment. The NAPC has been accused by its former top employees of being controlled by the Presidential Administration.
The Dzerkalo Tyzhnya newspaper reported, citing a source at the Presidential Administration, that NAPC top official Ruslan Radetsky had been instructed by the Presidential Administration to initiate the case, which he denies.
Leshchenko says that he borrowed part of the sum to pay for the apartment. Currently prosecutors are investigating a tax evasion case against Leshchenko’s creditors, including his relatives, he told the Kyiv Post.
In December prosecutors also opened another case against Leshchenko and other lawmakers, accusing them of obstructing the detention of Saakashvili by the SBU, which was later recognized by a Pechersk Court judge as an unlawful arrest.
Artem Sytnyk
A Kyiv court on Jan. 17 fined Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, Hr 1,700 for allegedly failing to give documents to the NAPC over an alleged conflict of interest.
The NABU denied all of the agency’s accusations and attributed the NAPC’s case against him to the authorities’ alleged attempts to restrict or destroy his bureau.
The NAPC claimed that Sytnyk had violated conflict of interest rules by authorizing Igor Yarchak, head of the NABU’s legal department, to represent his interests in court.
Oleksandr Lemenov, an anti-corruption expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms, said the charges were absurd, arguing that Sytnyk’s power of attorney for Yarchak was part of a widespread legitimate practice among Ukrainian officials.
Meanwhile, in November prosecutors opened another case against Sytnyk, accusing him of divulging an investigative secret during an interview with journalists last summer.
Meanwhile, pro-government lawmakers on Dec. 6 submitted a bill that would enable parliament to fire Sytnyk without an audit of his performance. The bill was later removed from the agenda after Western criticism.
In November, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine also 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.
David Sakvarelidze
In January a case against David Sakvarelidze, a Saakashvili associate, was sent to trial.
Sakvarelidze has been charged with illegally transporting Saakashvili across the border and resisting police officers during the ex-president’s dramatic breakthrough into Ukraine on Sept. 10. He faces up to seven years in jail if convicted.
Sakvarelidze was appointed a deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine in 2015, launched efforts to clean up the prosecution service, and arrested two top prosecutors on graft charges. However, he was fired in 2016 due to a conflict with then Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who Sakvarelidze says blocked the prosecution reform and helped corrupt prosecutors.
Shokin opened criminal cases against Sakvarelidze and his subordinate, accusing them of legal violations during the arrest of the two prosecutors charged with graft.
Shokin also opened another case against Sakvarelidze, accusing him of embezzling U.S. funds allocated for prosecution reform. The U.S. government denied the claim, and Shokin’s successor Lutsenko had to close the case due to the absence of a crime.
Yulia Marushevska
In February 2017, SBU Deputy Chief Pavlo Demchyna, an alleged protege of Poroshenko’s grey cardinals Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky, asked the NAPC, which is controlled by Poroshenko allies, to investigate Yulia Marushevska, a Saakashvili ally, over an $18 bonus she gave herself among other employees.
Ironically, NAPC Chief Natalia Korchak, who is under investigation in a large-scale graft case, awarded herself bonuses worth $20,000 in 2016.
Top NAPC officials Hanna Solomatina and Oksana Divnich said in November that the agency is involved in large-scale corruptionand completely controlled by the Presidential Administration. The NAPC and the Presidential Administration denied the accusations.
Marushevska, ex-chief of Odesa customs, also said in March that prosecutors and the SBU had opened another case against her, accusing her of violating the law during her customs reform initiatives. She sees the case as retaliation for her criticism of ex-State Fiscal Service Chief Roman Nasirov, a suspect in a graft case.
Critical journalists
The SBU said on Jan. 31 that prosecutors had opened a case against journalist Oleksandr Dubinsky, accusing him of misinforming citizens about security threats. Oleh Hladkovsky, a Poroshenko associate and a deputy secretary of the National Defense and Security Council, had previously asked the SBU to open a case against Dubinsky on high treason charges.
Dubinsky sees it as payback for his investigations into Hladkovsky’s alleged businesses in Russia and his alleged graft schemes, whose existence is denied by Hladkovsky.
Hladkovsky is linked to Cypriot firm HUDC Holding Limited, which sold four used armored Toyota Land Cruiser V8 cars worth $428,000 to state-owned defense company SpecTechnoEksport in May. The cars were allegedly overpriced, with the state overpaying by $56,000.
Hladkovsky has also managed to receive several lucrative military contracts for his automaker Bohdan, formerly co-owned by Poroshenko, including a supply of 60 military ambulances worth $2 million, according to the Nashi Groshi state procurement watchdog.
Meanwhile, Igor Guzhva, the chief editor of the Strana.ua news site, said on Jan. 31 that he had left for Austria and asked for political asylum. Guzhva, whose Strana.ua site is highly critical of Poroshenko, faces five criminal cases in Ukraine and was released on bail in June after being charged with extortion.
In September the SBU also opened a criminal case into an Ukrainska Pravda article on defense corruption, accusing the online newspaper of divulging a state secret.
Another journalist, Ruslan Kotsaba, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for urging people to evade the draft in 2016 and was declared by Amnesty International to be a prisoner of conscience. He was later released by an appellate court but is now on trial again.
TV journalist Savik Shuster, a critic of Poroshenko, had faced a tax evasion case, problems with cable providers and the temporary cancellation of his work permit before his 3sTV channel stopped operations altogether in March.
Sergi Milman
In December the SBU charged Sergi Milman, founder of IT firm YouControl, with “unlawfully interfering in computer networks,” and a court set Hr 51,000 bail for him. YouControl runs a database about Ukrainian companies used as a source by anti-corruption activists.
“(The SBU) wants to control the distribution of information,” Milman told the Kyiv Post. “Our system has data on the business interests of incumbent politicians, government officials and SBU employees.”
In late March, the SBU raided the offices and apartments of some employees of YouControl. The SBU seized computers, documents and money owned by the company’s staff, accusing them of the unlawful sale of equipment and software made by Russia.
Milman said that the SBU had seized property without search warrants, did not let lawyers be present, failed to carry out court orders to return YouControl property and falsified the forensic examination and indictment. The SBU denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
Sergei Hadzhynov
In December, Sergei Hadzhynov and two other activists of the AutoMaidan civil society group were charged with throwing eggs at Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Oleh Barna at a protest. They face up to seven years in prison if convicted.
The charges were brought immediately after the AutoMaidan, which has consistently exposed top-level graft, went to Lutsenko’s house on Dec. 9 to demand his resignation.The group said more than 300 cars took part – the largest AutoMaidan rally since the group went to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s estate in 2013.
Anatoly Vynohrodsky
In November Anatoly Vynohrodsky, Oleksandr Novikov and Leonid Lytvynenko — co-organizers of the current anti-Poroshenko protest tent camp in front of the Verkhovna Rada — were arrested.
Vynohrodsky, a veteran of the Donbas Battalion who had fought Russian-separatist troops and is now under house arrest, and Lytvynenko, a veteran of the OUN Battalion who is in custody, are accused of attacking a security guard and of robbery during a standoff between alleged corporate raiders and local residents over land rights in Kirovohrad Oblast in 2017. Vynohrodsky says he and other veterans had been helping farmers in a conflict with corporate raiders and did not rob or attack anyone.
Novikov, a Donbas Battalion veteran who is under house arrest, is accused of kidnapping a fellow Donbas volunteer fighter in 2014, which he denies.
