Prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulik has been at the center of several major controversies in Ukrainian politics.
Kulik, former deputy head of the international legal cooperation department at the Prosecutor General’s Office and ex-head of the department’s prosecution unit, was previously seen as a staunch loyalist of ex-President Petro Poroshenko and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. He was accused of cracking down on their political opponents — a charge that he denies.
But as Poroshenko’s prospects for re-election grew increasingly dim in the run-up to the March 31 presidential election, Kulik made a U-turn and charged several of Poroshenko’s allies with money laundering and embezzlement, triggering a political scandal.
In an interview with the Kyiv Post, Kulik talked about alleged interference by Poroshenko and other politicians in the work of the country’s prosecutors. He also said that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office was investigating alleged wrongdoing by former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
Poroshenko, whose press office did not respond to a request for comment, has previously denied interfering in law enforcement, and Biden has denied the accusations.
Kulik’s revelations highlight the politicized and dysfunctional nature of Ukraine’s law enforcement system, which changes direction every time the political leadership is replaced.
Kulik’s charges
In March, Kulik brought embezzlement and money laundering charges against a series of individuals with close ties to the president: Valeria Gontareva, the former head of the National Bank of Ukraine; Kostyantyn Stetsenko, a top executive at investment bank ICU; Poroshenko’s former Chief of Staff Borys Lozhkin and Poroshenko’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Oleksiy Filatov.
However, Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan claimed in March that the notices of suspicion were unlawful and invalid. Lutsenko said on May 6 he would not authorize the charges.
Kulik was expelled from the investigative group behind the charges and Lutsenko later disbanded the two units that issued the charges. Kulik alleged that Lutsenko was taking revenge for the notices of suspicion being issued against Poroshenko’s allies, while Lutsenko denied the accusations.
Kulik claimed that ICU could have laundered money in Poroshenko’s interests – a claim denied by ICU.
The prosecutor also said that Poroshenko should be investigated over his potential links to Yanukovych’s organized crime group during his stint as economy minister under the former president in 2012. At that time, Poroshenko controlled the auction committee that issued permits for companies on the liquefied petroleum market, Kulik added.
Poroshenko has denied all accusations of wrongdoing.
Yanukovych was ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution in February 2014 and subsequently fled to Russia, where he remains to this day.
Kolomoisky saga
In April, Kulik said that Poroshenko had illegally interfered in the case against Filatov, Gontareva, Lozhkin and Stetsenko.
Poroshenko denied this, accusing Kulik of meeting billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky in Israel and forming an alliance with him against the former president. Kolomoisky has been suspected of secretly backing Poroshenko’s opponent, current President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, but both of them deny being political allies.
Kulik admitted going to Israel, but said he had gone there for the medical treatment of a friend’s child and denied meeting Kolomoisky.
“They’re looking for my links to Kolomoisky,” Kulik said. “They shouldn’t. My link to Kolomoisky is Lutsenko.”
He claimed that Lutsenko and lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, a top Poroshenko ally, had sabotaged Kulik’s attempts to investigate Kolomoisky’s alleged ties to the group of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his associate Serhiy Kurchenko, a businessman frequently referred to as “Yanukovych’s wallet.” Kulik said that both Lutsenko and Hranovsky were cooperating with Kolomoisky.
“We were also investigating Kolomoisky but I was aware that Lutsenko is always on the phone with him, and he’s not even hiding it,” Kulik added.
He hinted that Lutsenko had leaked information on two suspects who could have given testimony on Kolomoisky, and, as a result, the case was blocked.
Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Sargan called this “nonsense,” while Hranovsky did not respond to a request for comment.
UMH case
Two of those charged by Kulik, Lozhkin and Filatov, are accused of money laundering during the sale of Lozhkin’s UMH media group to Kurchenko for $400 million in 2013. They denied the accusations.
Kulik claimed that Poroshenko and Lozhkin had interfered in the embezzlement case against Kurchenko.
There is testimony according to which Kurchenko arrived at Ukraine’s Hostomel Airport in 2015 and met Lozhkin, Kulik added.
Lozhkin’s spokeswoman Maria Popova could not comment on these claims.
Kulik also said that Poroshenko is explicitly mentioned in the notices of suspicion for Lozhkin and Filatov and still had a share in UMH Group after an agreement was reached to sell the company to Kurchenko. He argued that Poroshenko should be questioned and investigated in this case.
Poroshenko has always claimed he had sold his 3-percent stake in UMH in the months prior to the deal. However, an analysis of Cyprus company records by Al Jazeera indicates that, on the day of the sale, he still held the shares through a company in the British Virgin Islands.
Unless he divested himself of that company beforehand, at the point of sale, Poroshenko stood to receive $15 million, tripling his initial investment, Al Jazeera reported in 2018. A spokesman for Poroshenko said he did not own, directly or indirectly, any shares in UMH on Oct. 28, 2013.
Zlochevsky scandal
Another suspect charged by Kulik in March is Yanukovych-era Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky. According to the notice of suspicion, he is accused of laundering $36 million.
Zlochevsky has also been investigated over the issuance of subsoil exploration licenses to his own companies and for tax evasion. Zlochevsky has previously denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
Kulik alleged that Zlochevsky had paid bribes to the Prosecutor General’s Office monthly. The prosecutor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the accusation.
He also said that ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Eugene Enin had interfered in the Zlochevsky case and told him not to call Zlochevsky for questioning. Enin denied any wrongdoing, saying he had always prevented violations of the law at the prosecutor’s office.
The Prosecutor General’s Office closed the Zlochevsky tax evasion case in 2017, with Burisma paying just Hr 180 million ($6.8 million) into the budget.
Meanwhile, Zlochevsky’s Burisma group has supplied natural gas to firms owned by Poroshenko and his top allies, Igor Kononenko and Oleh Hladkovskyi, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Schemes investigative show reported in 2017. Both Kononenko and Hladkovskyi, as well as Poroshenko’s representatives, said that they had no executive control over the assets and, thus, were not responsible for whom their companies dealt with.
Biden scandal
Kulik also told the Kyiv Post that the Prosecutor General’s Office had been investigating ex-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s links to Zlochevsky’s Burisma group. He said that the Prosecutor General’s Office had agreed with U.S. authorities, including U.S. Attorney General William Barr, to create a joint group for that purpose. The U.S. Department of Justice did not reply to a request for comment.
Joe Biden’s son Hunter is a former member of Burisma’s board of directors, which has led to accusations by U.S. President Donald Trump’s supporters that Joe Biden helped Burisma. Both Biden and his son have denied accusations of wrongdoing.
“Poroshenko’s group kept all the schemes that worked under Yanukovych, but the income started flowing into another pocket,” Kulik claimed. “And Americans, including Biden, put their hands into that pocket.”
Kulik’s claim contradicts Lutsenko’s statement on May 16 that Ukrainian prosecutors do not suspect Joe Biden and his son of any wrongdoing. However, a memo allegedly leaked from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine by lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko shows that prosecutors are accusing former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden of receiving “an unlawful benefit” from Burisma.
Lutsenko has been accused of trying to curry favor with Trump by investigating Biden, Trump’s potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election.
Hranovsky’s influence
Kulik also said that top Poroshenko ally Hranovsky had heavily interfered in the Prosecutor General’s Office. Hranovsky had previously denied interfering in law enforcement.
“Hranovsky has tried to influence all cases,” he said. “Hranovsky is influencing the whole of the Prosecutor General’s Office, except for Enin’s department, because Lutsenko said that nobody should interfere with that unit.”
Kulik said that “Hranovsky constantly comes to the Prosecutor General’s Office, and they talk in the smoking room with (Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoly) Matios, (Deputy Prosecutor General Anzhela) Stryzhevska and others.” Matios and Stryzhevska did not respond to requests for comment.
Kulik also claimed that Hranovsky had interfered in the case involving the confiscation of $1.5 billion linked to Kurchenko and acted in the interest of Russian-Ukrainian oligarch Pavlo Fuks.
Some of Kurchenko’s assets seized in the confiscation were sold to Fuks and fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko, Kulik added. He claimed that Hranovsky and Fuks had been trying to cancel the confiscation.
One of the assets seized in the confiscation is Cypriot company Quickpace Limited. According to a contract published by Al Jazeera in 2018, Onyshchenko and Fuks bought Quickpace Limited from Kurchenko for $30 million in 2015.
Meanwhile, Fuks was filmed meeting with Hranovsky and visiting the Presidential Administration and the Interior Ministry in Kyiv by Radio Liberty in 2017.
Saakashvili case
Yet another alleged case of political interference is the investigation against ex-Georgian President and former Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili. In December 2017, Kulik’s department charged Saakashvili with complicity in Kurchenko’s criminal group for allegedly receiving money from Kurchenko to finance protests against Poroshenko. Saakashvili has said he believes the case to be the result of Poroshenko’s political vendetta against him.
Kulik said he had regularly reported on the Saakashvili case to Poroshenko at the Presidential Administration. Moreover, Poroshenko praised him and other prosecutors for going after Saakashvili, he added.
“Then Poroshenko became very emotional and started telling us what we must do (in the Saakashvili case),” Kulik said.
Kulik said that Poroshenko had told them to investigate and arrest certain allies of Saakashvili. However, he said that he and his colleagues did not obey Poroshenko’s orders.
Kulik also confirmed that Serhiy Semochko, a controversial ex- deputy chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) investigated over alleged graft and treason, had been in charge of the Saakashvili case at the SBU.
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. Tsokol ruled that Saakashvili’s detention by the Security Service of Ukraine without a court warrant and any other legal grounds was unlawful.
In February 2018, Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine without a court order, and the case against him was suspended. Under Ukrainian law, deportation is only possible with a court order.
Conflict with NABU
Kulik became a controversial figure in 2016 after the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) charged him with illicit enrichment of Hr 2 million ($80,000). The case was closed in March after the Constitutional Court ruled the illicit enrichment law unconstitutional.
Kulik claims the case was political. He told the Kyiv Post that, in 2015, then Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin had asked him to apply to be the head of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office as a counterbalance to NABU. However, his candidacy was rejected.
Shokin told the Kyiv Post he does not remember the alleged incident.
Shokin claimed that the Americans were trying to use the NABU to influence Ukrainian politics and that he needed Kulik to prevent this scenario, Kulik said. He believes the NABU’s illicit enrichment case against him to be the bureau’s revenge for this attempt.
“We have heard many complaints against the NABU from Kulik but we have not heard a single logical explanation of the fact that he acquired assets worth almost Hr 3 million from April through December 2015,” NABU Chief Artem Sytnyk said in 2016 in response to Kulik’s accusations.
