Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor Anatoly Matios has effectively admitted that the ongoing selection of the State Investigation Bureau’s chief was a subject of political horsetrading, according to video footage published by Hromadske TV on Nov. 25.
The yet-to-be-created State Investigation Bureau is expected to take investigative functions away from the Prosecutor General’s Office and must be independent from political interference.
“I will or will not be the head of the State Investigation Bureau depending on whether two factions will reach an agreement and whether the expert community will understand that the state’s political and geopolitical interests require such an unmanageable and unpredictable specialist as myself,” Matios, a candidate for the job of the bureau’s chief, said when being interviewed for the job, apparently referring to the two coalition parties, President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc and the People’s Front.
Asked by a commission member not to accuse the commission of being politicized, Matios said that political influence is “right because the (parliamentary) coalition forms state institutions.”
Matios could not be reached for comment, while Andriy Demartino, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, declined to comment.
Following the commission meeting, Matios was filmed running away from journalists and refusing to explain the origin of the fabulous wealth revealed in his electronic declaration for 2015, according to the Hromadske footage.
Matios, who has always worked for government, declared Vacheron Constantin, Ulysse Nardin, Breguet and Rolex luxury watches, as well as 20,000 British pounds and Hr 150,000 in cash.
Matios’ wife Iryna Barakh declared a 138,480 square meter land plot, several apartments, several businesses, an equivalent of $293,816 on bank accounts and an equivalent of $563,961 in cash.
Competing loyalists
The commission choosing the State Investigation Bureau’s head comprises government loyalists and does not have a single independent member, Oleksandr Lemenov, an expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms, told the Kyiv Post.
Matios, who is loyal to President Petro Poroshenko, is seen as a leading candidate to head the bureau, he said.
However, the recent negative publicity around Matios could be a ploy by the authorities to distract attention from another candidate that they are promoting, Olga Varchenko, he said.
Varchenko is an employee of the prosecutorial department accused of links to Poroshenko’s top allies Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky. The commission initially could not let her join the competition because she did not meet the age requirement and delayed its meetings until she reached the required age, Lemenov said.
Viktor Trepak, an ex-deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said in August that Hranovsky, who is accused of regularly interfering with law enforcement, had been tasked with choosing the bureau’s head. Hranovsky denies it.
Another leading candidate reportedly favored by the authorities is Oleksiy Horashchenkov, an aide to Poroshenko.
Meanwhile, top prosecutor Serhiy Horbatiuk, who is seen as independent from the authorities, has been blocked from the competition on formal grounds. According to the commission’s interpretation, he lacks required five-year management experience, while Horbatiuk has disputed that interpretation.
The only independent candidate left in the competition is Vitaly Tytych, a lawyer for killed EuroMaidan protesters.
AutoMaidan scandal
Apart from the State Investigative Bureau scandal, Matios has also been accused of persecuting activists of the AutoMaidan protest group, which played an important role in the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution against then President Viktor Yanukovych.
AutoMaidan said on Nov. 24 that Matios’ military prosecutor’s office had carried out searches at the apartment of AutoMaidan activist Mykola Sidorkin, who is accused of pressuring Olena Pervushina, head of Kyiv’s Holosiivsky Court, by attending court hearings and conducting surveillance over her.
AutoMaidan denied the accusations and described the searches as an effort by the authorities to put pressure on AutoMaidan activists after they exposed the wealth of Ukrainian judges, including Pervushina, as part of the Prosud monitoring project. They also argued that Pervushina was a protege of Matios, an ex-top official at Yanukovych’s administration.
“Matios’ military prosecutor’s office did what even Yanukovych didn’t dare to do – search an AutoMaidan activist’s apartment,” Roman Maselko, a lawyer for AutoMaidan, wrote on Facebook on Nov. 27.
In 2010 to 2014, Matios was technically employed by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and assigned first to the Supreme Administrative Court and then to Yanukovych’s administration. Since the SBU has not revealed the jobs that he could have simultaneously held at the SBU, citing a state secret, it is not clear if Matios is subject to dismissal under the lustration law on firing some top Yanukovych-era officials, according to Tetiana Kozachenko, ex-head of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department.
The military prosecutor’s office has expanded its powers by taking non-military corruption cases against Yanukovych allies, and Matios has been accused of trying to save some of these allies from prosecution. He has also been accused of fabricating cases against volunteer fighters and blocking those against top generals, including the investigation into the massacre of Ukrainian soldiers by Russian troops in Ilovaisk in 2014.
He denies the accusations.
