Editor’s Note: The Kyiv Post tracks the progress made by Ukraine’s post-EuroMaidan Revolution leaders in making structural changes in the public interest in a broad range of areas, from the defense and energy sectors, to taxation and pensions. Below are the main issues in focus from Nov. 17–24
Summary
In many countries, the wheels of justice grind slow, but in Ukraine they’re not even grinding at all — at least when it concerns prosecuting former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and officials from his regime for murdering EuroMaidan Revolution protesters and looting the country’s wealth.
President Petro Poroshenko looked dutifully somber and respectful when he visited the memorial to those who killed during the EuroMaidan Revolution on Nov. 21, the fourth anniversary of the start of the protests that ousted Yanukovych.
But shockingly, the post-revolutionary authorities that Poroshenko leads have failed to convict even one person for the murder of the 112 protesters known to have been killed by Yanukovych’s security forces.
Meanwhile, on Nov. 20, all investigations into the EuroMaidan murders and cases of corruption by Yanukovych regime officials came to a halt, in what looks like sabotage of the judicial process by the incumbent authorities.
Justice
One of the few achievements about which the post-revolutionary authorities can boast is the creation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU — an independent agency created to investigate crimes involving corruption. However, the NABU is a thorn in the side of the authorities.
The latest big case, in the Defense Ministry, was uncovered only on Oct. 11. Indeed, the constant obstruction of the work of the NABU is probably proof that it is working as intended and is independent.
The same cannot be said of another anti-corruption agency, the National Agency for Preventing Corruption. The agency, which is supposed to check officials’ electronic asset declarations for signs of graft, is yet to bring any major cases.
In fact, out of the 1.5 million asset declaration checks, the agency is supposed to make this year, only 91 have been completed so far, and only seven cases of criminal violations found.
The head of the agency, Natalia Korchak, is seen as being loyal to Poroshenko, and civic activists who oversaw the agency in 2015 said at the time that the selection competition had been rigged in favor of Poroshenko loyalists.
Worse, the agency itself has been accused of corruption: A top official at the agency, Hanna Solomatina, claimed on Nov. 14 that the agency had falsified checks on top officials’ asset declarations to ensure they were not prosecuted for violations.
Solomatina also claimed the declarations of political enemies of Poroshenko were being singled out for extra scrutiny. The NABU started investigating these claims, but the case was taken away from the agency by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, and given to the presidentially controlled SBU security service.
Meanwhile, controversy swirls around another anti-corruption reform — the creation of the State Investigation Bureau, a new body that will take over duties of the Prosecutor General’s Office (apart from high-level corruption cases, which will be investigated by the NABU). It was reported on Nov. 16 that Roman Truba, a controversial prosecutor who prosecuted a EuroMaidan activist for taking part in a protest in 2013, had been made the head of the bureau.
Moreover, Truba is now the head of a body that exists only on paper — it is not yet functioning.
New system
When the law on creating the NABU was passed in 2014, it was decided that the 15,000-member Prosecutor General’s Office would continue to investigate high-profile Yanukovych-era cases in order to reduce the workload on the new anti-corruption agency. The NABU, in fact, only started working in early 2016, and still only has a staff of 200 detectives (it is supposed to have 700).
Under the plans to tackle corruption drawn up after the EuroMaidan Revolution, the Prosecutor General’s Office was to lose its investigatory functions, and would concentrate only on prosecuting cases that had been investigated by other bodies — the State Investigation Bureau for general cases, and the NABU for cases involving corruption.
This was to prevent the prosceutors office from continuing to be used as a Soviet-style organ of political oppression: Under the old system, the presidentially appointed prosecutor general was able to open cases against political foes or close those against his friends, practically at a whim. As part of the transition, Nov. 20 was the date was set for handing over investigations being carried out by the Prosecutor General’s Office to the two new investigatory agencies.
Sabotage?
However, the plans to change the system were attacked from the start. The Special Investigations Department at the Prosecutor General’s Office, led by Sergii Gorbatyuk, which was given the task of investigating the EuroMaidan murder cases and Yanukovych official graft cases, found its work was being obstructed.
The department was understaffed and underequipped, and efforts to prosecute EuroMaidan murder cases were blocked by top prosecutors and from within the discredited courts. In addition, Gorbatyuk found that corruption cases that involved presidential allies were being transferred from his department and given to military prosecutors, who made no further progress on them.
Meanwhile, work on setting up the State Investigation Bureau stalled in the Rada: Prosecutor General Lutsenko, speaking on Nov. 17, said on Ukraine’s 112 television channel that he expected the bureau to start working only in late 2018, at least a year behind schedule.
The Nov. 20 deadline came and went, and according to Gorbatyuk, all investigations into Yanukovych-era crimes have now halted. The NABU is to take over the 3,500 corruption cases that prosecutors were working on — a workload that will swamp the agency. The EuroMaidan murder cases will also be halted.
Moreover, if the cases remain stalled for too long, they may have to be closed under amendments made to the Criminal Procedure Code made on Oct. 3, the NABU warned. The bureau said the changes limit pre-trial investigations of cases to two months from the moment a notice of suspicion is filed, which would in many cases leave no time to carry out full investigations. Cases could fail in the courts or have to be dropped even before going to trial, the NABU said.
Foul play?
An attempt was made in parliament by Samopomich Party MP Olena Sotnyk to extend the Nov. 20 deadline to prevent the transfer of the 3,500 Yanukovych-era cases to the NABU. However, the attempt appears to have failed: According to Daria Kaleniuk, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, the “documents were (then) sent by the Presidential Administration to 10 ministers in Ukraine (without) a certain clause in the amendment.”
This raises the disturbing possibility that the text of the amendment was altered after its approval by the legislature. As of Nov. 23 it was unclear whether the transfer of the cases had started, but Lutsenko said on Nov. 20 that the move was still planned. It appears that Poroshenko is doing everything to ensure that no high-profile criminal cases ever result in a conviction in Ukraine.
