The Cabinet of Ministers has submitted a bill to fire Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) before his authority expires in 2022.
Anti-corruption activists see the decision to fire Sytnyk as President Volodymyr Zelensky’s reaction to a NABU investigation into embezzlement during COVID-19 vaccine purchases and a NABU bribery case against Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov.
The bill was submitted after Zelensky called Sytnyk and harshly criticized him for starting the vaccine investigation, sources familiar with the situation told the Kyiv Post. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Sources cited by the Anti-Corruption Action Center also confirmed the information that the bill that would fire Sytnyk was Zelensky’s reaction to the vaccine investigation.
The President’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
In February the NABU opened an investigation into alleged embezzlement during procurement of a COVID-19 vaccine by the Ukrainian Health Ministry. The investigation looks into the ministry’s choice of a Ukrainian company that it’s using as an intermediary to buy 1.9 million doses of the vaccine made by Sinovac Biotech, a Chinese company.
This is far from the first attempt to fire Sytnyk, but the first one that apparently comes from the president’s office.
According to Justice Minister Denys Malyuska, who initiated the amendment that seeks to fire Sytnyk, the bill was intended to comply with Constitutional Court rulings that undermined NABU and challenged Sytnyk’s appointment. Earlier, Zelensky’s office clashed with the court over those rulings that were perceived as intentional sabotage to Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure.
Malyuska said on Facebook that the Cabinet had previously submitted a bill to keep Sytnyk until his authority expires in 2022 but parliament did not support it.
However, the problem of bringing the NABU in line with the Constitutional Court rulings remained and it’s a condition of Ukraine’s cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Malyuska added. It is not clear if the IMF would agree to Sytnyk being fired before his term expires.
Malyuska said, however, that he personally thinks that Sytnyk remaining as head of the NABU until 2022 does not contradict the Constitution.
Until a new head of the NABU is chosen, Sytnyk’s first deputy chief Gizo Uglava will be the acting head of the NABU, according to the bill.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center also lambasted a new procedure for choosing the head of the NABU stipulated by the Cabinet bill. While the Constitutional Court rulings ostensibly sought to diminish presidential powers, the bill allows the president to control the selection of the NABU’s head.
“The procedure guarantees that a NABU head controlled by Zelensky will be chosen,” Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, wrote on Facebook.
Three commission members for choosing a new NABU chief will be delegated by the presidentially controlled National Security and Defense Council, and six members, including three foreign experts, will be chosen by the Cabinet of Ministers – also a body loyal to Zelensky.
“Through this story, the government will lose the last remnants of international partners’ trust,” Shabunin said.
Ukraine will lose IMF money and will spoil relations with the United States, European Union and NATO, he added.
Constitutional Court rulings
On Aug. 28, the Constitutional Court ruled that then-President Petro Poroshenko’s 2015 decree to appoint Sytnyk as head of the bureau was unconstitutional. The court argued that the president’s authority to appoint the NABU chief is not stipulated by the Constitution.
On Sept. 16, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional several clauses of the Law on the NABU, including those that grant the president the right to create the NABU, formally appoint its chief, appoint members of the commission that selects the chief of the NABU and the audit commission under the presidential quota.
In October, a court led by Pavlo Vovk, a suspect in a NABU graft case, ordered Sytnyk’s dismissal despite having no such jurisdiction.
The measures were criticized by legal experts and anti-corruption activists as an effort by the corrupt establishment to destroy the NABU’s independence.
Lawyers cast doubt on the legality of the Constitutional Court rulings and on whether it can have any consequences from the legal standpoint.
Stanislav Shevchuk, former head of the Constitutional Court, told the Kyiv Post that firing Sytnyk based on the Sept. 16 court ruling would be unlawful, and he must serve until his term expires in 2022 under the law.
Vitaly Tytych, ex-head of the Public Integrity Council judicial watchdog, says the Constitutional Court rulings are highly dubious from a legal standpoint. He sees them as an exclusively political decision.
The Constitution does not specifically mention a presidential right to appoint the head of NABU but such authority may be implied in the constitutional right for the president to make other appointments stipulated by laws, Tytych argued.
Moreover, the head of the NABU cannot be dismissed based on a Constitutional Court ruling, according to the NABU law.
Under the NABU law, Sytnyk can only be fired if he resigns, reaches the age of 65, cannot perform his duties due to health reasons, is convicted of a crime, ceases to be a Ukrainian citizen, moves to another country, becomes a foreign citizen, has alimony debt or fails to file an asset declaration on time. He can also be fired if a court recognizes his family’s wealth to be ill-gotten or if a government audit finds the bureau to be ineffective.
Any other reasons for his dismissal are directly banned by the NABU law.
Editor’s Note: This report is part of the Investigative Hub project, within which the Kyiv Post monitors investigative reports in the Ukrainian media and brings them to the English-speaking audience, as well as produces original investigative stories. The project is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.
