The contest for chief anti-corruption prosecutor has ground to a halt after the government’s preferred candidate was vetoed, according to anti-corruption activists.
On June 4, international experts stopped the nomination of Andriy Kostin, a member of parliament from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ruling 244-member Servant of the People party, for the job of the chief anti-corruption prosecutor. Since then, pro-government members on the selection panel have blocked panel meetings. Interviews with candidates that were scheduled for June 7-10 did not take place.
“We know for a fact that (Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy) Yermak gave an order to suspend the selection in order to decide what to do with it (after Kostin was vetoed),” Olena Shcherban, a legal expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Post, citing her sources.
From May 31 to June 4, the selection commission interviewed 20 candidates and vetoed 19 of them. Only one candidate out of the 20, Oleksandr Klymenko, was greenlit by the commission and advanced to the next stage. Only 17 candidates remain in the running and must be interviewed by the commission.
Authorities may stop the selection process through a court decision or delay it indefinitely, the Anti-Corruption Action Center said.
The disruption of the selection process may lead to Ukraine losing visa-free travel with Europe and Western funding.
“The President’s Office doesn’t have and cannot have anything to do with the selection procedure (for the anti-corruption prosecutor),” Yermak told the Kyiv Post in a reference to the accusations against him. “That’s why all these statements are not true. At the same time, if you ask my opinion about Andriy Kostin, head of parliament’s legal policy committee, I can say frankly and openly: I believe him to be a very professional, honest and highly moral person who has a good reputation in the legal community.”
The selection commission denied the accusations of sabotage. On June 17, it scheduled interviews with the remaining candidates starting from June 23.
Tatarov’s role
The commission for choosing the chief anti-corruption prosecutor consists of four experts delegated by international organizations and seven members chosen by parliament. At least two of the former and five of the latter are required to advance a candidate.
Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov, who has been charged with corruption, handpicked pro-government members of the commission, according to a May 13 report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative program Schemes. Commission members either know Tatarov personally or are connected to him, Schemes reported.
“Tatarov’s people, who represent the President’s Office, are currently disrupting the selection process because Kostin was kicked out,” Oleksandr Lemenov, head of anti-corruption watchdog StateWatch, told the Kyiv Post.
Tatarov was charged in December with bribing a forensic expert, which he denies. In February, a court refused to extend the Tatarov investigation and prosecutors effectively killed it by missing the deadline for sending it to trial.
Tatarov did not respond to requests for comment.
Kostin’s candidacy
On June 4, international experts on the selection panel vetoed Kostin, deciding he’s not politically neutral enough. Activists saw Kostin as the government’s top candidate.
Kostin is an important figure in the president’s party and heads the parliament’s legal policy committee. The lawmaker responded that he would step down from his Servant of the People job if selected as the chief anti-corruption prosecutor.
Kostin was also accused of nepotism. His daughter is an aide to Andriy Zadorozhny, a lawmaker from the Servant of the People party, while Zadorozhny’s son is an aide to Kostin. Meanwhile, Kostin’s wife is an assistant to Maksym Dyrdin, who is also a lawmaker from Zelensky’s party, while Dyrdin’s wife is an assistant to Kostin. Kostin argued that none of these appointments and associations broke the law.
He was also criticized because he visited Russian-annexed Crimea in 2015 and 2018. Kostin argued that his visits didn’t break the law either and claimed he was visiting a family doctor. Shcherban and Lemenov dismissed this explanation, saying that it was a violation of ethical principles.
Yet another accusation is that Kostin’s legal policy committee has constantly sabotaged judicial reform — something that he denied.
During the interview with Kostin, pro-government commission members praised him and tried to gloss over all the problems. Commission head Kateryna Koval used to work with Kostin at an expert council at the National Association of Lawyers of Ukraine.
Other controversial candidates
Another candidate allegedly backed by the authorities, Lviv Oblast’s chief prosecutor Anton Voitenko, was also vetoed by experts delegated by international organizations.
Out of the 17 candidates who remain in the running, there are no people with an explicit link to the Zelensky administration. However, some of them are direct subordinates of Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, including Oleksiy Semenyuk, Serhiy Piun, Anton Ovcharenko, Serhiy Yarovy, Maksym Tymoshenko, Andriy Sinyuk, Oleksandr Sabada and Ihor Shkolny.
Semenyuk is friends with Vladlen Neklyudov, a member of parliament from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, according to the Anti-Corruption Action Center.
Oleksandr Chaly, who is also still in the running, is a former prosecutor and ex-official at the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, and Oleksandr Formahei is a former prosecutor and police officer.
Semenyuk, Piun, Ovcharenko, Yarovy, Tymoshenko, Sinyuk, Chaly and Formahei do not meet integrity and ethics standards, according to civic watchdogs Transparency International Ukraine, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, DEJURE and AutoMaidan. Most of them have violated asset disclosure rules, the watchdogs said. The candidates did not respond to requests for comment.
“There are dubious candidates from the standpoint of integrity, and (the authorities) may use the ongoing pause to reach a bargain with them,” Shcherban said.
Prosecutor Taras Shcherbai, who has yet to be interviewed, works for the acting chief anti-corruption prosecutor Maksym Hryshchuk. In 2018 Shcherbai signed a letter of support for then chief anti-corruption prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky amid a corruption scandal.
In the same year, the NABU released audio recordings of Kholodnytsky pressuring anti-corruption prosecutors and courts to stall cases, urging a witness to give false testimony and tipping off suspects about future searches. Kholodnytsky confirmed that the tapes were authentic but said they had been taken out of context.
One more remaining candidate with a link to the government is Ivan Smily, a deputy head of the Land Cadastre Agency.
Independent candidates
Several candidates seen as independent were vetoed by pro-government commission members.
“The President’s Office was vetoing everyone whom they don’t like (through pro-government panel members),” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, told the Kyiv Post.
Vetoed independents included Olena Krolovetska, the head of a NABU unit.
The decision raised eyebrows because Krolovetska had the highest score among all candidates in legal knowledge and IQ tests. She met all integrity and ethics standards, according to Transparency International Ukraine, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, DEJURE and AutoMaidan.
“When she was interviewed, everyone was impressed with how professional she was and that she was a few steps ahead of everyone,” Shcherban said. “But the (pro-government commission members) didn’t back her.”
In fact, the pro-government commission members accused her of committing violations while leading the corruption case against Pavlo Vovk, arguably Ukraine’s most infamous judge. Critics see this as the establishment’s revenge against Krolovetska.
Other accusations included claims by a pro-Kremlin lawmaker that one of Krolovetka’s friends allegedly leaked NABU information to the U.S. Embassy and the fact that Krolevetska’s father lives in Russia. The Anti-Corruption Action Center dismissed the accusations as ludicrous.
Other candidates seen as independent by civil society groups were also kicked out of the selection process, including anti-corruption prosecutors Serhiy Kozachyna and Andriy Perov, former top investigator Sergii Gorbatuk and several NABU detectives.
However, several candidates with a reputation for independence remain in the running.
Klymenko, the only candidate who has successfully passed an interview, is a NABU detective who spearheaded the corruption case against Tatarov and ex-lawmaker Maksym Mykytas.
By greenlighting Klymenko, pro-government commission members may have sought a quid pro quo with foreign experts in exchange for approving Kostin, the Anti-Corruption Action Center said.
Independent candidates who have yet to be interviewed include anti-corruption prosecutors Ihor Semak and Roman Symkiv and NABU detective Roman Yaromenyuk. Anti-corruption watchdogs found no violations of ethics and integrity standards by these candidates.
Symkiv was in charge of the Tatarov case before it was transferred to another prosecutor by Venediktova in December.
Vovk’s court
The Anti-Corruption Action Center expects the President’s Office to try to cancel the selection results through a court decision.
Oleksandr Kareyev, a candidate who has been vetoed by the selection commission, has already filed a complaint against the commission with the Kyiv District Administrative Court, headed by Vovk. The court did not respond to a request for comment.
Kareyev was fired from the NABU as a result of an internal probe in 2020. Vovk’s court later reinstated him.
In 2020 Kareyev also filed a lawsuit seeking to fire NABU chief Artem Sytnyk. Vovk’s court promptly upheld the lawsuit in what was widely seen as revenge against Sytnyk.
In April Zelensky submitted a bill to liquidate the Kyiv District Administrative Court and marked it as urgent. However, parliament’s legal policy committee, which is headed by Kostin, has refused to send the bill to the parliament’s floor for two months.
If the selection process for the anti-corruption prosecutor is disrupted by Vovk’s court, Ukraine may lose visa-free travel with Europe and funding from the International Monetary Fund, Lemenov said. The independence of the chief anti-corruption prosecutor was a precondition for both.
“(Ukraine) must now consolidate (anti-corruption) reforms,” the U.S. and E.U. embassies to Ukraine said in a joint statement on June 16. “We believe one critical prerequisite for the success of these reforms is the role of independent experts, nominated by international partners of Ukraine, in the commissions that select and vet the individuals who serve in Ukraine’s judiciary and anti-corruption institutions — bodies that have enormous power to shape the future of Ukraine.”
