During the session week of Feb. 20-24, the Ukrainian parliament tried unsuccessfully to revive the much-criticized tax police, failed a key bill that legally defines the status of the territories occupied by the Russian-separatist forces, and scandalously attempted to assign a shady foreign auditor for the key anti-graft agency, National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
The next meeting of the parliament will take place on March 14.
No comeback for tax police
On Feb. 23, the lawmakers tried to pass an amendment that would bring back tax police that was stripped of its powers from Jan. 1 after it was accidentally left out of the new Tax Code.
Some 20 lawmakers blocked the parliament’s rostrum, demanding to drop the tax police amendment, while about 100 people protested against the tax police restoration outside the Verkhovna Rada.
Earlier Nina Yuzhanina, a lawmaker with the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko and head of the tax committee at the parliament, approved the amendments that restore tax police.
Yuzhanina said that the tax police can’t be eliminated before it is replaced with the finance police, a new Western-style agency.
But Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk disagrees: He called tax police a “repressive body which doesn’t oppose financial and economic crimes, but kills business.”
Danyliuk also said on Feb. 23 that a bill on financial police is now being considered by the coalition government and will be submitted to the parliament after the approval.
Activists have been advocating the idea that the financial police staff should be selected in a transparent competition, have high salaries and execute analytical functions rather than repressive ones.
Status of occupied territories
This week the Verkhovna Rada committee on state building and local government failed to include a bill “On the Occupied Territories” in the parliament’s agenda. It happened amid an almost one-month-long blockade of coal supplies from the occupied territories of the Donbas by activists.
The bill prohibits the trade between the territories controlled by Russian-separatist forces and the rest of Ukraine. It also legally defines the status of occupied territories and their borders, preventing sea and river vessels, rail transport and trucks from crossing it.
The draft of the law was submitted to parliament in September.
Lawmaker Yehor Sobolev from Samopomich party, who is one of the bill’s authors, said in parliament on Feb. 8 that the law would resolve the conflict between authorities and activists who block the coal transportation, protesting against trade with the occupied territories.
On Feb. 21, around 200 people gathered for a rally outside parliament in Kyiv to support the law and protest the trade. The rally was organized by the Ukrop party, which has been linked to the billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman criticized the blockade, saying that it could lead to electricity blackouts in Ukraine, since a lot of the country’s electricity is produced at the thermal power stations.
Auditor for NABU
The parliament failed to appoint the auditor for the National Anti-Corruption Bureau on Feb. 23, as lawmakers disagreed on the candidacy.
Samopomich’s Sobolev previously proposed to appoint Rob Storch, deputy inspector general of the U.S. delegated by the U.S. Embassy and supported by the Verkhovna Rada’s anti-corruption committee.
However, on the day of voting, the Poroshenko Bloc and the People’s Front parties proposed to appoint Nigel Brown, a British citizen whose candidacy wasn’t previously discussed.
Brown, who was present in the parliament, said that he “investigated the biggest financial crimes in the world” but failed to specify who offered him the job in Ukraine.
Opposition and reformist lawmakers were appalled that the coalition was trying to appoint an unknown auditor.
As a result, neither Storch nor Brown could get enough votes. The decision was sent back to the Rada anti-corruption committee for revision.
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, and lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko said that attempt to install Brown is seen as a way to influence and obstruct the NABU.
“Verkhovna Rada halted the attempt to appoint a ‘pocket auditor’ for NABU,” Leshchenko said on Feb. 23, adding that Brown was backed by the president’s ‘grey cardinals,’ lawmakers Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky.
Later journalists discovered that Brown worked in a security firm ISC Global that acted in the interests of Russian oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky.
Inheritance tax changes
On Feb. 23, the lawmakers voted in the law that cancels taxes on inheritance for the so-called “second-in-line relatives” – namely siblings and grandchildren. Before, only children and parents could inherit property without paying a 5 percent tax.
