Deputy Prosecutor General Eugene Enin said on April 25 that he had resigned due to the scandal over the charges against top allies of President Petro Poroshenko in a corruption case involving businessman Serhiy Kurchenko.
The allies include Valeria Gontareva, the former head of the National Bank of Ukraine, Kostyantyn Stetsenko, a top executive at investment bank ICU, Poroshenko’s former Chief of Staff Borys Lozhkin, and his Deputy Chief of Staff Oleksiy Filatov.
“The situation around some cases, including (the Kurchenko case), is somewhat politicized, and my efforts to remove this politicization are insufficient now,” Enin said at a news briefing. “That’s why I made this choice.”
Enin told the Kyiv Post that he had not been shown the notices of suspicion initially and believed there was no evidence justifying the issuing of the notices by top prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulik in March. He said that that’s why he had put the notices “on hold.”
The notices were also issued with procedural violations, since they were not sent to the suspects, Enin said.
He said, however, that he had not canceled the notices of suspicion because he did not have the authority to do so. He added that Kulik was procedurally independent and had the right to issue the notices.
Kulik saga
In March, Kulik issued notices of suspicion against Gontareva, Stetsenko, Lozhkin, Filatov and ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky.
However, Larysa Sargan, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, said in March that the leadership of her agency believed the notices of suspicion for all of the individuals, except for Zlochevsky, to be unlawful and invalid.
She said that the notices of suspicion were not based on evidence, and they were not served personally to the suspects, as they should be.
On April 11, Kulik said that Enin, Poroshenko, Filatov and Bloc of Petro Poroshenko lawmakers Igor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky had illegally interfered in the Kurchenko case. Enin denied the accusations, and Filatov, Kononenko and Hranovsky did not respond to requests for comment on the issue.
Poroshenko denied the accusations on April 11. He claimed that Kulik had gone to Israel, where tycoon Igor Kolomoisky lives, and decided to take part in the oligarch’s political activities. Kolomoisky denied meeting Kulik.
But one day after the April 21 run-off of the Ukrainian presidential election, in which comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy beat Poroshenko, the Prosecutor General’s Office issued summonses to the Poroshenko allies in the Kurchenko case.
The suspects were expected to be questioned and charged on April 23 and April 25.
Filatov and Lozhkin said they would not go to the questioning, arguing that the publication of the summonses through the Internet was illegal. Gontareva, who lives in London, also said she would not come, while Stetsenko declined to comment.
Gontareva and Stetsenko are expected to be charged with aiding organized crime and complicity in embezzling Hr 2 billion ($74 million) by buying and selling government bonds.
Gontareva, Lozhkin and Filatov are also expected to be charged with complicity in laundering over $440 million through the 2013 sale of UMH, a major international media company founded by Lozhkin.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is also planning to charge Zlochevsky with laundering $36 million.
All of the suspects have previously denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
Other Enin scandals
Enin has also been involved in other controversies in the past.
In September he signed a document authorizing the extradition of Russian-born Timur Tumgoyev to Russia.
The Kharkiv Human Rights Group and Muslim Cheberloyevsky, commander of Ukraine’s Sheikh Mansur battalion, said that Tumgoyev had fought against Russian-led troops in the Donbas. The Prosecutor General’s Office denied that he had fought there.
Tumgoyev was extradited at the request of Russia’s Federal Security Service, which has routinely fabricated political cases to crack down on Kremlin critics.
Russia claims that Tumgoyev also fought against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and has charged him with fighting for illegal groups that oppose Russia’s interests and for alleged participation in a terrorist group.
Meanwhile, Enin and Deputy Prosecutor General Anzhela Stryzhevska met with ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky in 2016 in a hotel in Tel Aviv in Israel to negotiate over the charges against him, according to an audio recording of the meeting leaked to the Slidstvo.Info journalism project and published on June 9. Enin and Stryzhevska argued the meeting had been lawful, while an investigator in the Stavytsky case argued the meeting had been unlawful.
The journalists also released an audio recording of a call between a man sounding like Stavytsky and an unidentified mediator, whom he refers to as “Kolya.” They discuss the future meeting with Stryzhevska, and “Kolya” says he will offer her “200” – presumably a bribe of $200,000.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko contributed to this report.
