The Prosecutor General’s Office and the National Agency for Preventing Corruption have both opened investigations against reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko.
The law enforcement agencies have come under fire for targeting anti-graft activists and critics of the authorities as large-scale corruption remains unpunished.
Leshchenko dismisses the charges as fabricated and political. He said he believed that the cases were Poroshenko’s reaction to his assistance in sending information on the alleged corruption of the president and his inner circle to U.S. intelligence agencies.
Meanwhile, the Security Service of Ukraine on Dec. 1 opened a treason case against exiled lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko after he claimed he had given information on Poroshenko’s corruption, including audio recordings of his conversations with him, to U.S. government representatives. He also said earlier Poroshenko had used him as an intermediary to bribe lawmakers.
Poroshenko’s representatives declined to comment on Leshchenko’s accusations but said on Dec. 1 that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies were waiting for Onyshshenko in Ukraine with his compromising materials.
A prosecutorial department accused of fabricating cases on behalf of Poroshenko’s top allies Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky opened an unlawful enrichment case against Leshchenko in October. Kononenko and Hranovsky deny the accusations.
The case concerns Leshchenko’s purchase of a 192-square meter apartment worth Hr 7.5 million ($281,000) in downtown Kyiv in August.
Leshchenko said on Nov. 30 that the case was being handled by a unit that employs Dmytro Sus, a controversial prosecutor accused of corruption, fabricating political cases and torturing National Anti-Corruption Bureau staff – claims that Sus denies.
The prosecutors violated the law that gives the National Anti-Corruption Bureau exclusive jurisdiction in high-profile graft cases, Leshchenko argued on Dec. 1.
He interpreted the case as Poroshenko’s revenge for his efforts to expose corruption.
Several weeks ago a “representative of the ruling elite” asked for Leshchenko’s assistance in contacting U.S. intelligence agencies about the use of U.S. accounts by Poroshenko and his inner circle in corruption schemes, he said.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan did not respond to requests for comment.
In September the National Anti-Corruption Bureau said it had not found any grounds for a criminal case in Leshchenko’s purchase of the apartment. The bureau said, however, that Leshchenko’s use of an interest-free loan to fund the purchase could be an administrative infraction and transferred the information to the National Agency for Preventing Corruption.
The agency, which inspects officials’ asset declarations, said on Dec. 1 that Leshchenko’s purchase of the apartment was an administrative infraction punishable with a fine.
The agency said that an alleged Hr 1.8 million discount received by Leshchenko qualified as a gift. Gifts of this size to officials and politicians are forbidden by anti-corruption law.
“I haven’t received any discounts,” Leshchenko said. “There are lower price offers from real estate agencies and buyers who have bought (apartments) at a lower price.”
The Dzerkalo Tyzhnya newspaper reported on Dec. 1, citing a source at the Presidential Administration, that Ruslan Radetsky, a pro-Poroshenko top official at the agency, had been frequently meeting with Poroshenko’s Deputy Chief of Staff Oleksiy Filatov and other administration officials. Radetsky was instructed by the Presidential Administration to file a report on Leshchenko’s alleged administrative infraction, the source said.
Radetsky declined to comment, while Rouslan Riaboshapka, a reformist agency official, said he had not seen any documents in the Leshchenko case.
Poroshenko’s critics argued that the cases are politically motivated persecution.
“Close attention that almost all law enforcement agencies pay to the Leshchenko case contrasts with their weak reaction (if not inaction) to the actions of other top government officials,” Viktor Trepak, an ex-deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, wrote on Facebook on Dec. 2.
He said that the government had chosen not to “make e-declarations a powerful method of public control over the authorities” and instead turned it into a repressive instrument.
“Given (Ukraine’s) unstable democracy and unstable legal system, a lack of independent courts, a politically dependent law enforcement system and an underdeveloped legal culture, I assumed that electronic declarations could be turned into a large-scale tool for persecuting dissidents,” he said.
