One of the main reasons EuroMaidan protesters braved the winter cold five years ago, and stood up to deadly attacks from riot police, was their determination to oust former President Viktor Yanukovych, whose increasingly authoritarian rule and kleptocratic regime was bankrupting the country.
Yanukovych and his cronies, dubbed “the Family” in Ukraine for their mafia-like, corrupt seizure of control of some of the country’s most lucrative industries, are reckoned to have looted the Ukrainian economy of around $40 billon worth of assets – and perhaps more.
So many Ukrainians will be grimly satisfied that Yanukovych has finally been convicted of at least some of his many crimes, with Obolon District Court in Kyiv finding him guilty of high treason for calling on Russia to intervene militarily in Ukraine.
But while Yanukovych has been convicted, he and other members of “the Family” remain out of reach of Ukrainian justice, hiding in Russia, and there is little prospect of them ever answering for their crimes in Ukraine.
Yanukovych was supposed to give his closing statement in his trial on Nov. 19 by video link from Moscow, but failed to show up even for that – Russian media reported on Nov. 18 that he had suffered serious injuries playing tennis. The statement was rescheduled to Dec. 5, but when the appointed day came his lawyers said that Yanukovych was in hospital and could not appear on a video link.
And even if, as expected, the Obolon court sentences Yanukovych to 15 years in prison for his crimes, there is little prospect of him ever serving time, either in Ukraine or in Russia: Russia has not signed the European Convention on the International Validity of Criminal Judgments, and is hardly likely to carry out the court’s sentence or turn Yanukovych and other wanted Ukrainians now living Russia over to the Ukrainian authorities to face justice in their homeland.
Several other Yanukovych cronies, including his former chief of staff Andriy Klyuyev and his former Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky have also had Interpol arrest warrants against them dropped.
And in Ukraine, the authorities have done little to prosecute top Yanukovych-era officials, with only one minor graft case against ex-Justice Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych having been sent to trial. That case is still going on.
Ukrainian authorities are also accused of obstructing the investigations against Yanukovych’s regime by closing graft cases against ex-Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky and Yanukovych’s Deputy Chief of Staff Andriy Portnov.
Zlochevsky paid Hr 180 million (about $6.9 million) as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors in 2016.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has also struck controversial plea bargains with Oleksandr Katsuba, a suspect in an embezzlement case involving lawmaker Yury Boiko, ex-Deputy Economy Minister Oleksandr Sukhomlyn, and several low-level suspects.
Kyiv Post reporter Oleg Sukhov contributed to this article.
