Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova has faced accusations of reversing her predecessor Ruslan Riaboshapka‘s prosecution reform.
Specifically, she has made several controversial appointments and excluded foreign partners and civil society from a vetting commission for prosecutors. Several tainted prosecutors fired under Riaboshapka have already been reinstated by courts.
Venediktova denied such accusations on May 8, arguing that the reform would continue after the COVID-19 lockdown was lifted. She said that she sought to minimize the negative consequences of Riaboshapka’s vetting.
Controversial commission
The reform started under Riaboshapka, and 632 of the 1,339 prosecutors at the central branch of the prosecutor’s office were fired as a result of vetting, whose stated aim was to oust corrupt and incompetent employees.
Vetting and appointment commissions comprised three prosecutors and three experts delegated by international organizations and embassies — usually representatives of Ukraine’s civil society.
However, Venediktova on April 15 excluded civil society and foreign partners from a commission for appointing top prosecutors. According to her order, the commission will comprise four prosecutors and two representatives of universities.
“From now on, decisions during vetting will be made by prosecutors controlled (by Venediktova), which will inevitably result in the reinstatement of clans as a result of new appointments: prosecutors will choose other prosecutors,” the Anti-Corruption Center said on May 5. “At the same time, representatives of civil society and foreign partners will effectively have no impact on decision making.”
Venediktova has also appointed several prosecutors fired as a result of vetting under Riaboshapka as her advisors.
Reinstatement of tainted prosecutors
Another challenge that the prosecutor’s office faces is the reinstatement of prosecutors fired under Riaboshapka by courts. Courts have already reinstated several of them and about 270 lawsuits by other prosecutors are being considered.
Under Ukrainian law, there are many procedural safeguards that make it difficult to fire prosecutors as part of efforts to protect individual prosecutors’ independence.
Riaboshapka initially claimed he would bypass such safeguards by liquidating the old Prosecutor General’s Office and creating a new entity. Thus, he claimed, the safeguards will not apply to the new entity, and courts will not reinstate fired prosecutors.
However, the Prosecutor General’s Office has not been formally liquidated but has been just renamed, according to the official register. According to Riaboshapka’s critics, this allowed courts to reinstate those fired.
Controversial appointments
Meanwhile, several of Venediktova’s appointments have also prompted concerns.
On May 5, she appointed Roman Hovda as the acting chief prosecutor of Kyiv. Hovda is seen as an old prosecutorial cadre with a controversial background.
Specifically, Hovda worked at the prosecution unit that supervised the police during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution and was accused of persecuting EuroMaidan protesters. Hovda denied the accusations in a response to the Kyiv Post.
In 2015 Hovda was the chief prosecutor of Odesa Oblast and clashed with the region’s then governor Mikheil Saakashvili, who accused him of banditry and racketeering. Hovda denied the accusations.
Hovda also signed the fraud charges against ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko in 2016 in what anti-corruption activists deemed to be a political vendetta by then Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
He came in handy for several tainted prosecutor generals: Hovda was both a deputy of Shokin and the chief prosecutor of Kyiv under Yuriy Lutsenko.
On March 27, Venediktova also appointed Oleksiy Simonenko and Andriy Lyubovich as her deputies.
Lyubovych was the head of the investigations department at the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast prosecutor’s office during the EuroMaidan Revolution and was subsequently investigated over allegedly persecuting EuroMaidan protesters. Ironically, he now supervises cases into crimes against EuroMaidan protesters.
EuroMaidan protesters’ lawyers have lambasted his appointment. He denied the accusations of wrongdoing, telling the Kyiv Post that he has met with civic activists and promised to cooperate with them.
The other deputy, Simonenko, supervised an embezzlement case against ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko under former President Viktor Yanukovych. Tymoshenko’s prosecution was later recognized as political persecution both by Ukrainian and European authorities.
Simonenko did not respond to a request for comment.
Venediktova’s response to accusations
Venediktova on May 8 denied intentions to block prosecution reform.
She said she aimed to “minimize the negative consequences of vetting to avoid making new mistakes during vetting at regional and local prosecutors’ offices and prevent a cadre collapse and a wave of lawsuits resulting in millions paid from the state budget.”
She said that the prosecutor’s office and foreign partners are currently working on criteria for prosecutors’ competence and ethics.
“It’s a pity that some activists interpret this as the halting of the reform,” Venediktova said. “This is a figment of imagination. The vetting of prosecutors at regional prosecutors’ offices will resume immediately after the lockdown is lifted.”
Riaboshapka’s reform
One of the complaints against Riaboshapka was that his vetting of prosecutors 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 Vitaly 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.
