A top prosecutor who helped destroy the graft case against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov attended Tatarov’s birthday party on Sept. 1, according to a Sept. 8 investigation by the Ukrainska Pravda news website.
The birthday was also attended by a dozen other law enforcement officials, which confirms speculation that Tatarov influences law enforcement bodies.
The Tatarov case is part of an embezzlement investigation against ex-lawmaker Maksym Mykytas, former CEO of state construction firm Ukrbud.
In the 2000s the National Guard concluded a deal to exchange a land plot for an Ukrbud housing complex in Kyiv’s high-end Pechersk area. However, in 2016-2017 the National Guard agreed to get a different Ukrbud housing project near the Chervony Khutor metro station in Kyiv’s outskirts.
This constituted embezzlement since the market value of the two complexes differs by Hr 81.6 million, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).
In December Tatarov, who used to serve as a lawyer for Ukrbud, was charged with bribing forensic expert Kostyantyn Dubonos on behalf of Mykytas to give false evaluation results that helped the company. Mykytas has testified against Tatarov.
Tatarov and the President’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Oleksiy Symonenko
One of those who attended Tatarov’s birthday is Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko, according to video footage published by Ukrainska Pravda. In December Symonenko used a Pechersk Court ruling as a pretext to take the case away from the politically independent NABU and give it to the politically pliable Security Service of Ukraine.
Symonenko did not respond to a request for comment.
The NABU believes the transfer of the Tatarov case to be unlawful.
Under Ukrainian law, the Tatarov bribery case falls squarely into NABU’s jurisdiction. NABU cases cannot be considered by other law enforcement agencies, and jurisdictional disputes can only be considered by the High Anti-Corruption Court.
The anti-corruption court ruled in January that the Tatarov case must be investigated by the NABU and ordered Venediktova to consider a motion to transfer the investigation to the bureau. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office refused to do so, citing the Pechersk Court decision.
The High Anti-Corruption Court also suspended the Pechersk Court decision on the transfer of the Tatarov case in February. Despite this, the case was buried.
Later in February, a court refused to extend the Tatarov investigation, and prosecutors effectively killed it by missing the deadline for sending it to trial.
Tsutskiridze and others
Tatarov’s birthday party was also attended by Maksym Tsutskiridze, the current head of the National Police’s investigative department. Tsutskiridze is a long-time friend and co-author of Tatarov and used to work with Tatarov at the Interior Ministry under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Tsutskiridze did not respond to a request for comment.
Mykytas has said in an interview that Tsutskiridze used to help Tatarov when he was Ukrbud’s lawyer.
Tsutskiridze also faces accusations of helping Tatarov evade responsibility in the 2020 bribery case.
In December the police arrested Mykytas and charged him with kidnapping, and Tsutskiridze publicly commented on the case. Mykytas’ lawyers believe this to be a fabricated case aimed at pressuring the former lawmaker to withdraw his testimony against Tatarov – a claim that the police denied.
Meanwhile, in 2018 Tsuskiridze’s mother-in-law got an apartment in the high-end housing complex that was investigated in the Mykytas-Tatarov case.
Another guest at Tatarov’s party was Yan Sterlyuk, a top prosecutor who oversees the Security Service of Ukraine – a body that was supposed to investigate the Tatarov case.
Others who attended Tatarov’s birthday include Oleh Tkalenko, a deputy chief prosecutor of Kyiv Oblast; Deputy Prosecutor General Ihor Mustetsa; Vyacheslav Huz, head of the State Migration Service’s Kyiv branch, and Andriy Nebytov, head of Kyiv Oblast’s police department. Additionally, among the guests were Vasyl Malyuk, the former senior deputy of Security Service of Ukraine chief Ivan Bakanov; Mykhailo Titarchuk, a deputy head of the State Fiscal Service, and Oleksandr Kovtun, head of a department at the National Police.
