The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, stripped four lawmakers of their immunity from prosecution on July 11 to July 13.
While it marks the first time such a measure has been taken against members of the governing coalition, parliament allowed law enforcement agencies to arrest only one of the legislators. This could potentially make any attempts to prosecute the other three futile.
And if previous incidences of lawmakers being stripped of immunity are anything to go by, the cases against them will likely go nowhere.
Analysts say Ukraine’s politically subservient judiciary is incapable of sending crooked lawmakers to jail, and the authorities are refusing to create an independent anti-corruption court that would be able to do so.
“Frankly, I’d say that there will be no convictions,” said Oleksandr Lemenov, an anti-corruption expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms.
In 2014, the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko, the People’s Front and their coalition allies promised to cancel lawmakers’ immunity.
But such a proposal is yet to come before parliament.
Shady deal?
The Rada allowed prosecutors to press criminal charges against Oles Dovhiy from the People’s Will faction, Boryslav Rozenblat from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, Maksym Polyakov from the People’s Front and Mykhailo Dobkin from the Opposition Bloc. However, parliament rejected motions to prosecute Yevhen Deidei from the People’s Front and Andriy Lozovy from the Radical Party.
Prosecutors did not file motions to arrest Dovhiy, Deidei and Lozovy, while their requests to arrest Rozenblat and Polyakov were rejected by parliament. Only the request to arrest Dobkin, who is accused of abuse of power, was approved, and he still has time to flee before a court authorizes the arrest.
The three offshoots in parliament of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions — the Opposition Bloc, Vidrodzhennya and the People’s Will factions — gave almost no votes for the prosecution of the six lawmakers.
Only about half of the Poroshenko Bloc and the People’s Front voted for the prosecution of Deidei and Lozovy, and only a minority of these factions voted for the arrest of Rozenblat and Polyakov.
The authorities’ critics suspect there was a shady deal among the factions to ensure the motions came up short of votes.
“They agreed that the ex-Party of Regions members would not vote,” Lemenov said. “The Poroshenko Bloc and the People’s Front wanted to show that they were good guys ready to strip immunity.”
However, the Poroshenko Bloc and the People’s Front have denied that, claiming they were committed to stripping the lawmakers of immunity.
Amber corruption
Rozenblat and Polyakov are suspected of taking bribes worth about $300,000 to initiate laws on amber production, organize an illegal amber mining scheme and bribe other officials, judges and prosecutors for that purpose. Both have denied accusations of wrongdoing.
The motions to strip Rozenblat and Polyakov of their immunity from prosecution included minute details on the alleged corruption scheme, and the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine or NABU has published extensive video footage of meetings between the two lawmakers and a NABU undercover agent.
“The NABU has given bullet-proof evidence in the Polyakov and Rozenblat cases,” said Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board. “The NABU can charge them and then send the case to trial. But it’s obvious that, even with bullet-proof evidence, the system will defend them until the end.”
Rozenblat was an official representative of Poroshenko during the 2014 presidential election, while Polyakov is an associate of ex-lawmaker Mykola Martynenko, another suspect in a corruption case.
Chornovetsky ally
Meanwhile, Dovhiy is suspected of abuse of power in the allegedly illegal allocation of land in Kyiv.
But analysts doubt that there will be any progress in the case, because the statute of limitations on the case runs out on Oct. 1.
“I’m very skeptical about the Dovhiy case, because the case was led by the Prosecutor General’s Office, not the NABU,” Shabunin said.
Dovhiy is a loyalist of Poroshenko and has been instrumental in getting his People’s Will faction to vote for presidential initiatives.
In the 2000s he was an ally of the scandal-ridden Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chornovetsky, who left Ukraine in 2011 after facing numerous corruption accusations, which he also denies. Poroshenko’s top associate Ihor Kononenko was an ally of Chornovetsky and Dovhiy and a member of the then mayor’s party during that period.
Dovhiy, who has had a long-running conflict with Prosecutor General Lutsenko, admitted violating Kyiv City Council’s regulations during the allocation of land, but denied violating the law. He also said he and other lawmakers violated the Verkhovna Rada’s procedural rules when voting to appoint Lutsenko as prosecutor general in May 2016. He accuses Lutsenko of holding his position illegally, which the prosecutor general denies.
The anti-corruption prosecutor’s office said on July 12 that it had opened two investigations against Lutsenko after Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko submitted complaints to them. Lutsenko is under investigation on suspicion of abuse of power during his appointment in May 2016 and on suspicion of lying in his declaration and tax evasion, the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office said.
A special law abolishing the legal education requirement for the prosecutor general was passed with unprecedented speed to make Lutsenko’s appointment possible. His critics say the law was passed with procedural violations. Lutsenko denies all the accusations.
Lucky ones
Two other lawmakers escaped prosecution.
Deidei is suspected by the NABU of unlawful enrichment worth Hr 6 million based on his electronic asset declaration. “The case is a political stunt,” Deidei said on July 11. “I haven’t done anything they are accusing me of.”
Critics argue that Deidei escaped prosecution likely because he is a close associate of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Meanwhile, Lozovy is suspected by the Prosecutor General’s Office of evading taxes worth Hr 1.83 million. Lemenov said that the evidence in the Lozovy case could have been used to charge him with unlawful enrichment, but prosecutors decided to use a milder article on tax evasion, which is punishable by a fine.
Shabunin and reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko said that the Lozovy case could be an effort to make the Radical Party more loyal to the Presidential Administration.
Failed cases
Other politicians may also be prosecuted.
Lutsenko said over the past week that prosecutors were preparing to charge Opposition Bloc lawmaker Yevhen Bakilin and Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes in graft cases.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky said on July 11 that he had sent to Lutsenko a draft motion to strip Denys Dzenzersky, a lawmaker from the People’s Front, of his immunity, and to prosecute him for allegedly lying in his income and asset declaration.
However, previous criminal cases against lawmakers have not been successful. Andriy Klyuyev from the Opposition Bloc, and Oleksandr Onyshchenko from the People’s Will faction — both suspects in embezzlement cases — fled the country in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
Vadym Novynsky from the Opposition Bloc, Serhiy Melnychuk from the People’s Will and Ihor Mosiychuk from the Radical Party were stripped of their immunity in 2015 to 2016. Of these three, only the Melnychuk case has been sent to trial. Moreover, Novynsky and Melnychuk have not even been arrested. Mosiychuk was detained, but the courts canceled his arrest due to procedural violations and gave him his immunity back, ruling that the Verkhovna Rada had violated procedure in stripping him of it.
Meanwhile, in May Leshchenko published what he says is the text of a draft motion to strip Opposition Bloc leader Yury Boiko of his immunity.
Leshchenko said the motion had been blocked first by ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and then by his successor Lutsenko, both of whom deny the accusations.
