Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, faces pressure on all sides.
His newly created graft-fighting agency is struggling to prove its relevance to civil society and show that it is not just another political tool, like the Prosecutor General’s Office.
But the bureau’s capabilities are limited by a lack of personnel, weak powers and flawed legislation.
Nevertheless, Sytnyk says his bureau will retain its independence from political pressure.
“There are populist forces in parliament that are trying to prove that we’re dependent on someone – the president or the Cabinet,” Sytnyk said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. “We’re not going to file notices of suspicion just to defend ourselves from all these accusations. We will file them only if there are grounds to do so.”
Offshore scandal
But Sytnyk’s critics say he failed a key independence test when the bureau said in April it would not investigate documents showing President Petro Poroshenko failed to declare an offshore firm in the British Virgin Islands. The documents were leaked as part of the Panama Papers project.
The bureau said then that it had no authority to investigate the president. But lawyers told the Kyiv Post that, while it cannot file notices of suspicion for the president or arrest him, it could have still investigated the facts.
Commenting to the Kyiv Post on the offshore firms of Poroshenko and other officials, Sytnyk said that failure to declare an offshore company was a violation of the anti-corruption law.
But he said that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine could do nothing about it, as it could only investigate amounts exceeding Hr 725,000 ($28,864). The share capital of Poroshenko’s firm, Prime Asset Partners, totaled $1,000, or Hr 24,920.
Some lawyers argue, however, that the bureau can still investigate a corruption scheme if it suspects that larger amounts could actually be involved.
The bureau also failed to react to documents according to which Poroshenko could have transferred 3.9 million euros, or Hr 110.3 million, in a combined cash/in-kind payment to a Cypriot offshore firm in March, in violation of the law. The documents were published by the Slidtstvo.info investigative TV program last month, although Poroshenko’s representatives denied the accusations, saying the transfer only involved shares, not cash.
In April, the Prosecutor General’s Office immediately concluded that no crime was committed in the president’s offshore scheme. In May, the pro-Poroshenko majority in parliament also refused to investigate the issue.
The Panama Papers leak also revealed that Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov owns about eight undeclared offshore companies, although he denies this.
Sytnyk said the bureau had not opened criminal cases into the firms because there is no money on their accounts. But the bureau is investigating an illegal privatization scheme at Odesa Airport allegedly linked to Trukhanov, he added.
Grey cardinals
The bureau’s independence was also tested after it opened a case against Poroshenko’s “grey cardinal” and lawmaker Ihor Kononenko and his protégé, Andriy Pasishnik, in February on charges of interfering in the work of a government official. The move followed then-Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius’ accusations that Kononenko, who denies the charges, had been trying to install his protégés at his ministry.
Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, then published a screenshot of text messages in which Pasishnik says Kononenko invited him to become a deputy of Abromavicius.
In April, Maxim Gryshchuk, a deputy chief anti-corruption prosecutor, said in response to a lawmaker’s request that no evidence had been found that Kononenko interfered in the work of Abromavicius. The move is seen by some as an attempt to whitewash Kononenko, who was reinstated as a deputy head of its parliamentary faction.
Sytnyk contradicted Gryshchuk, saying that no final decision had been made on whether Kononenko violated the law.
Oleksandr Hranovsky, an ally and business partner of Kononenko, has also caught the bureau’s attention.
In February a district court in Kyiv had banned the National Anti-Corruption Bureau from accessing Viber messages written by Olga Tkachenko, a member of the Odesa Portside Plant’s executive board and a former aide to Hranovsky. The bureau is investigating an alleged corruption scheme at the plant.
Sytnyk said that the decision on Tkachenko had not damaged the investigation, because the bureau would still have access to the Viber messages.
“Maybe the judge didn’t know that we’d already gotten the information we were interested in from this gadget,” he said.
Sytnyk added that a case concerning the Odesa Portside Plant could be sent to court in June.
Hranovsky has also been accused of interfering with the work of the judicial system on behalf of Kononenko and Poroshenko. In May, Radio Liberty filmed Hranovsky meeting with a top judge and the head of a forensic institute, while investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap took a picture of him drinking tea with controversial prosecutor Serhiy Lysenko, who threatened to beat a defendant last year. Several lawmakers subsequently asked the bureau to investigate the evidence.
“We’re currently considering this request, but we haven’t yet made a final decision on what we’re going to do with it,” Sytnyk said.
Another high-profile suspect, ex-lawmaker Mykola Martynenko, is under investigation in Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic over alleged links to corruption schemes at the Odesa Port side Plant and nuclear power monopoly Energoatom.
The bureau has been criticized for failing to file a notice of suspicion for Martynenko, an ally of ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, or arrest him since opening the case in late 2015.
“If someone thinks that half a year for such a case is a long period, this is not the case,” Sytnyk said. “We can’t file a notice of suspicion exclusively to satisfy society’s expectations. We must act as lawfully as possible.”
Sytnyk said the bureau had sent requests for assistance on the Martynenko case to eight countries, but some of them had not been cooperative.
“Austria is a problem,” he said. “It’s very difficult. We have visited Austria, but unfortunately we’re not happy with the speed of our request’s implementation.”
Austrian authorities are currently investigating 14 money laundering cases against Ukrainians, Deutsche Welle reported on June 8, citing Austria’s Criminal Police. Last year Austria uncovered suspicious transactions linked to 197 Ukrainian citizens, which is four times more than in 2014, the police said.
Another obstacle was the initial refusal by the Prosecutor General’s Office to transfer its separate investigation against Martynenko to the bureau.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau requested the case files in February, but received them only in April.
Stumbling blocks
The bureau’s work is also being hampered by a lack of personnel. Sytnyk said that the bureau had just 500 employees, including 140 detectives working on 150 criminal cases. In contrast, the Prosecutor General’s Office has 15,000 employees.
Other problems include the bureau’s inability to independently wiretap suspects, and the fact that current legislation requires courts to release suspects on small amounts of bail, Sytnyk said.
Moreover, the bureau faces legal restrictions in reaching plea bargains to avoid lengthy and costly trials. In Georgia under ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, the majority of graft cases were resolved by plea bargains, with testimony used to prosecute higher-level suspects, Sytnyk said.
However, the shortest prison term the bureau can offer suspects in a plea bargain is seven years, which dissuades them from cooperating.
“Our resources are limited, and we’re trying to push to the limits,” Sytnyk said.
