As civil society activists expected, attempts to discredit them started right after they disclosed their assets publicly, in compliance with a controversial law.
Despite international criticism and calls to cancel the requirement for public disclosure of assets of anti-graft activists, which was passed by the Ukrainian parliament and imposed in 2017, lawmakers have failed to cancel the e-declarations for activists even after the deadline, which was April 1.
Every Ukrainian involved in anti-corruption activities in a non-profit organization had to file a highly-detailed online disclosure form of assets and income in 2017 for themselves and their immediate family – the same form as required from public officials.
“Our society has already seen watchdogs disclose Hr 1.5 million in yearly income, which is more than Ukraine’s prime minister, president and prosecutor general earned,” Iryna Lutsenko, a lawmaker of President Petro Poroshenko’s party, the largest faction with 135 seats in parliament, said during the faction meeting on April 2.
“Those guys make a decent living with money from international partners. They declared solid income, have all the reasons and resources to criticize (officials) and be anti-graft activists.”
Many saw Lutsenko’s claims as slightly hypocritical.
Lutsenko is also the president’s representative in the Rada and wife of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who declared an after-tax salary of a little over Hr 1 million ($36,000) in 2017.
Early in January, however, Lutsenko’s family spent a week in the Four Seasons Resort in Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, paying an estimated 50,000 euros for the trip.
That means Lutsenko’s family spent more on one vacation than Vitaly Shabunin, Ukraine’s top watchdog and the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, earned in 2017.
Shabunin disclosed getting Hr 842,633 in salary and a Hr 31,500 fee from the Friedrich Ebert Fund in Ukraine, as well as a Hr 15,410 fee from the Lviv Business School Community. That brought the top watchdog’s earnings in 2017 to Hr 889,543, or 27,183 euros.
In contrast, President Poroshenko declared income of Hr 16 million in 2017.
According to his electronic declaration, Poroshenko earned Hr 336,000 in official wages and Hr 15.7 million in interest on bank deposits.
The president donated his official wage to charity, Poroshenko’s press service reported on March 30.
Poroshenko disclosed spending of $430,000 from his bank accounts, almost the same amount he supposedly spent on a week-long New Year’s vacation in the Maldives in December.
However, the press service said Poroshenko had spent on his vacation a lot less than $500,000 – the sum estimated by Schemes, an investigative branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Cancel or not
The European Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn, in a harsh statement published on March 28, said Ukraine must cancel asset declarations for anti-graft activists.
The Ukrainian authorities have not lived up to their commitments, Hahn said.
The failure to repeal the expansion of this obligation, rather than to require such declarations only from public officials, is contrary to Ukraine’s European aspirations. It is contrary to the strong recommendations given by Ukraine’s international partners, including the European Union, Hahn said.
Hahn’s statement was referring to Ukraine’s government numerous promises to cancel e-declarations. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko promised to cancel the e-declaration requirements for activists, and in July submitted a bill to the Verkhovna Rada to replace the measure with a requirement that their organizations publish financial reports.
However, the Verkhovna Rada, where pro-Poroshenko forces command a majority, has never considered the president’s alternative bill.
But even the European Commission for Democracy Through Law, better known as the Venice Commission, said on March 16 that the changes offered by Poroshenko would conflict with human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of association, the right of respect for private life and the prohibition of discrimination.
Several lawmakers initiated an emergency session of the Rada on March 29 in order to cancel the declarations.
The Rada failed to meet on March 29. But the same day several independent lawmakers and Batkivshchyna Party members and Yulia Tymoshenko submitted legislation aimed to cancel the e-declarations for activists.
On April 2 Tymoshenko submitted another, alternative bill, co-authored with Rada head Andriy Parubiy and his deputies Iryna Gerashchenko and Oksana Syroid. On April 3, both were rejected by the Rada.
Foreign agents
Radical Party lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk has labeled civic activists foreign agents.
“Those so-called anti-graft activists have been working in Ukraine for foreign money, helping to turn Ukraine into a raw material base for the rest of the world,” Mosiychuk wrote.
Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko, who also frequently attacks anti-graft activists, declared winning Hr 570,000 in the private lottery Favorit Sport and almost Hr 20 million income in 2017. Lyashko has been serving as a Ukrainian public official with no business interest since the early 2000s.
Activists are under attack in other ways.
Shabunin is accused of beating blogger Vsevolod Filimonenko, an aide to lawmaker Serhiy Melnychuk.
Prosecutors on Jan. 15 also amended the charges against Shabunin, increasing the maximum term of punishment from three years in prison to five years. The article was changed to “assaulting a journalist,” since Filimonenko runs his own Glas Naroda (People’s Voice) citizen journalism project.
On June 8, Filimonenko approached Shabunin when unknown people served him a summons to a military enlistment office and started asking him questions about his military service. Shabunin then hit Filimonenko in the face, saying that it was payback for Filimonenko insulting Oleksandra Ustinova, an expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, and making her cry.
On March 27 Shabunin’s trial has been postponed on an unknown term.
“The government achieved its goal with e-declarations for watchdogs,” Anastasia Krasnosilska, another activist of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote on Facebook on April 3.
Krasnosilska wrote that the authorities would check and track activists’ assets, but won’t do the same with top government officials e-declaration.
“Instead of taking the no anti-corruption court and no electronic verification of e-declarations system establishment into the spotlight, everybody is discussing our assets again and again,” Krasnosilska said.
Activists of Anti-Corruption Action Center, as well as Ukraine’s Western partners from IMF and EU, have long been demanding an anti-corruption court as well as an electronic declarations verification system.
As of April, almost two years after electronic asset declarations were launched in Ukraine, National Corruption Prevention Commission staff has been checking declarations manually, spending 60 days on each one.
As of November, National Commission was studying only some 456 electronic declarations of top officials from the 1.5 million asset declarations filed in 2015-2016.
The UNDP mission in Ukraine has developed a special verification module for the National Corruption Prevention Commission. But the commission has been testing it since August 2017.
Furthermore, the commission still has no access, or limited access, to the more than 10 government registries needed to verify the information that officials and activists disclosed in their e-declarations.
