Two decades after it was first mooted, Ukraine’s State Investigation Bureau, the country’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations, began its work in November 2018.
But the bureau – which as intended to strip the Soviet-style Prosecutor General’s Office of investigative functions, and transfer its cases to a corruption-free and politically independent body – has been mired in corruption scandals, and concerns about its independence remain.
The bureau investigates non-corruption-related crimes in which the suspects are top officials, lawmakers and judges, as well as employees of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, and ex-presidents.
EuroMaidan controversy
Prosecutor Roman Truba became the head of the State Investigation Bureau in 2017.
He was born in Lviv in 1974 and has worked as a prosecutor since 1997. He was the chief prosecutor of Lviv Oblast’s Pustomyty District in 2011 to 2014.
In November 2013 Truba prosecuted EuroMaidan activist Andriy Shevtsiv for blocking traffic on a highway in Lviv Oblast. Shevtsiv’s supporters saw this as political persecution.
Truba denied the accusations. “There were signs of a crime,” he said. “We were protecting the rule of law.”
He also said he was against defining this as a “EuroMaidan case” and said it should be qualified as a regular crime.
The 2014 lustration law requires the firing of prosecutors who prosecuted cases against EuroMaidan activists who were later amnestied.
Truba denies being subject to the lustration law. Moreover, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Justice Ministry argued that Truba should not be fired because Shevtsiv was amnestied under a law different from the one mentioned in the lustration law.
However, the law under which Shevtsiv was amnestied has an identical title and an almost identical text to that mentioned in the lustration law. Oleksandr Lemenov, an anti-corruption expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms, and lawyer Vitaly Tytych believe that it is effectively the same amnesty law, and Truba must be fired according to the spirit of the lustration legislation.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has investigated Truba over allegedly unlawful decisions against Shevstiv, but he has not been officially charged.
Ironically, Truba became the top prosecutor in charge of EuroMaidan investigations in 2014 to 2015.
EuroMaidan investigations were actively sabotaged by the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office during that period, according to Sergii Gorbatuk and Oleksiy Donsky, who are currently investigating EuroMaidan cases at the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The Prosecutor General’s Office and Truba denied the accusations of the sabotage of EuroMaidan cases.
“I’d like to emphasize the conditions in which this was going on,” Truba said. “We had two units with 14 people each (to investigate EuroMaidan cases). The investigators did the impossible… There are no equivalents of such cases in Europe or in post-Soviet countries.”
Another irony is that all EuroMaidan cases must be transferred from the Prosecutor General’s Office to Truba’s State Investigation Bureau by early 2020, according to the law.
Shady appointments
Yet another controversy concerns the appointment of discredited officials to other jobs at the State Investigation Bureau.
In July, a selection commission chose 27 top officials for the State Investigation Bureau. However, half of the names had been leaked in advance to Ukrainian media, prompting critics to conclude that the competition had been rigged, with pre-approved government loyalists getting the top jobs by bypassing competition procedures.
In August Truba refused to sign off on the appointments, saying that some of the officials had been investigated over money laundering and treason, while others had been targets of criminal and journalistic investigations. He added that the commission had destroyed the results of the candidates’ polygraph tests, although they were supposed to have been kept for five years.
But in November Truba appointed 23 of the 27 nominees. He told the Kyiv Post that there were no controversial people among the 23 appointees.
“I didn’t say that all of the 27 candidates were corrupt, (and) those about whom there were concerns are no longer working,” Truba said, referring to the four candidates who were not appointed.
However, five of the 23 officials appointed by Truba have been identified by the AutoMaidan anti-corruption watchdog as not meeting integrity standards.
One of them, Oleksandr Turu, has been investigated in a treason case for allegedly cooperating with Russian occupation authorities in annexed Crimea when he lived there. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Another controversial official, Anton Drozd, was nominated as an investigator of the bureau by a selection commission in March, although he has not been officially appointed yet. Drozd could not be reached for comment.
In 2015 AutoMaidan activist Serhiy Stroy took a picture of smartphone correspondence between several Dnipro district prosecutors, including Drozd, in a courtroom. In the messages, they discussed opening a criminal case against Stroy, “beating the “sh*t out of him” and having someone steal his phone. Three of the prosecutors were fired after the scandal, although Drozd remained on his job.
Rigged competition?
The selection of Truba himself as the head of the bureau has also been questioned.
According to Lemenov, Truba was previously close to People’s Front lawmaker Serhiy Pashynsky and to Oleksandr Turchynov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. He is now allied with Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, Lemenov said.
Truba denied having links to top officials, although he said he regularly meets with top officials and politicians to discuss working issues.
Lemenov and other activists say that the competition for the State Investigation Bureau was rigged in favor of government loyalists, and the commission that chose Truba was dominated by politicians and ignored civil society’s opinion. The authorities deny the accusations.
“I also argue that the external commission is politicized,” Truba said. “This commission shouldn’t select all the top officials.”
He said, however, that there were no court decisions that declared the competition invalid.
Several lawsuits have been filed against the selection process. They have been rejected by lower courts and have yet to be considered by the Supreme Court.
Top prosecutor Gorbatuk, who is investigating EuroMaidan cases, was not allowed to take part because he had allegedly not had managerial experience. He filed a lawsuit, providing documents that he had managed investigative groups – including a unit in the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Meanwhile, lawyer Tytych argued that the commission’s composition violated the law because one of its members, Vladyslav Bukharev, did not have a legal degree and several commission members did not comply with the criteria of integrity.
One of the commission members, People’s Front lawmaker Yevhen Deidei, was given a suspended 5-year sentence for mugging seven people at gunpoint in Odesa in 2012, but the case was later revoked by prosecutors. He had also been investigated over alleged illicit enrichment, but that case was closed in March due to the cancellation of the illicit enrichment law. Deidei denies the accusations of wrongdoing.
Another lawsuit concerns State Investigation Bureau Deputy Chief Olga Varchenko, who was allowed to take part in the competition despite not having passed the required 35-year age threshold when she submitted documents. The commission even waited until she reached the required age.
Varchenko has been accused of having political links to lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, a top ally of President Petro Poroshenko. Varchenko has admitted being acquainted with Hranovsky, but the lawmaker has denied influencing her.
She has also been mentioned during court hearings in a corruption case against Pavlo Grechkivsky, a member of the High Council of Justice.
Dmytro Sus, one of the prosecutors pursuing the Grechkivsky case, has testified in court that Hennady Butkevych, the owner of the ATB store chain, asked prosecutors to go after Grechkivsky in exchange for $20,000 to $50,000.
He said that Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko had ordered them to pursue the case, and that the money was supposed to be divided between him and other prosecutors, including Varchenko. The Prosecutor General’s Office and ATB did not respond to requests for comment.
Varchenko called Sus’ testimony the products of his “sick imagination.”
Truba told the Kyiv Post that the Varchenko episode was being investigated but said that she could not be suspended until a court orders her suspension.
“I have a critical attitude to this, regardless of whether this was committed by top officials or lower-level officials,” Truba said. “Such facts must be checked and such persons must be held responsible if there is evidence.”
