Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expelled an anti-corruption activist from his anti-corruption council and appointed top officials who face graft accusations to the body.
Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, was removed from the National Council for Anti-Corruption Policy, according to a presidential decree published on June 1. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova were appointed to the council.
The President’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
The shakeup removes a long-standing, well-known corruption fighter from the council and brings on board officials who have faced serious accusations of corruption or professional incompetence in recent months.
Avakov’s appointment
Avakov’s appointment to the council comes just two weeks after a case of lawlessness in the police force led to calls for the interior minister’s removal.
In late May, two police officers were arrested for torturing and raping a woman in Kaharlyk, a town of just under 14,000 people located 75 kilometers south of Kyiv.
“If you were wondering how Zelensky assessed the nine-hour rape of a woman by police at a police station, that’s the response,” Shabunin wrote on Facebook. “Zelensky also views Avakov’s theft of Hr 14 million during backpack purchases for the war zone positively. It’s good that he expelled me because I wouldn’t want to sit at one table with Avakov. But, as far as I can see, Zelensky doesn’t have a problem with that.”
“If the president can’t replace a minister whose police force has been on a killing and raping spree for six years, we’ve got to seek a replacement for such a president,” Shabunin added.
Avakov and his allies face serious accusations of corruption, and he has a toxic reputation among Ukrainian civil society. Avakov and his associates deny the accusations.
In 2017, Avakov’s son Oleksandr and ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar were charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau with embezzling Hr 14 million ($550,000) by supplying overpriced backpacks to the Interior Ministry.
Other videos investigated by law enforcement also implicate the Interior Ministry’s State Secretary Oleksiy Takhtai and Avakov’s former deputy Vadym Troyan in alleged corruption schemes.
Yermakgate
Another appointee, Yermak, also faces accusations of corruption, which he denies.
In March, Geo Leros, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, published videos that appeared to show Andriy Yermak’s brother Denys considering candidates for government jobs and discussing receiving money from some of them.
In April, Serhii Shumsky and Dmytro Shtanko, Denys Yermak’s partners in the alleged graft scheme, said in an interview with the Bihus.info investigative journalism site that the chief of staff’s brother had received payments from candidates for state jobs. Shtanko also said that Andriy Yermak himself was implicated in the scheme and received money as well.
The Yermak brothers did not deny the authenticity of the videos, but Denys Yermak claimed they were taken out of context. Andriy Yermak also dismissed the accusations and lashed out at Leros, promising to sue him.
Other council members
Some other members of the anti-corruption council are also controversial.
One of them, Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky, has been implicated in several corruption scandals. In 2018, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine released audio recordings in which Kholodnytsky is heard pressuring anti-corruption prosecutors and courts to stall cases, urging a witness to give false testimony and tipping off suspects about future searches. Kholodnytsky confirmed that the tapes were authentic, but said they had been taken out of context.
Another council member, Ihor Umansky — the former finance minister and now an aide to Yermak — used to be a member of the board of directors at Gase Energy Ltd., a firm that was investigated in the U.S. for alleged corruption and money laundering. He did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2018, then-Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk accused lawmaker Igor Kononenko, President Petro Poroshenko’s top ally, of trying to impose Umansky as a deputy finance minister. Kononenko, who denies the accusations of wrongdoing, has been investigated in several corruption cases.
Oleksandra Ustinova, a lawmaker from the Golos party, said in the Rada on March 4 that Umansky had been implicated in a scandal linked to Oleksandr Yanukovych, the son of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Specifically, in 2015 Umansky, as a deputy finance minister, authorized a Hr 79 million payment to Ukrprofmed, a construction firm linked to Oleksandr Yanukovych, she added.
Andriy Smyrnov, a deputy chief of staff for Zelensky and also a member of the council, was at the center of another scandal in 2019.
In August, Roman Ratushny, an activist fighting alleged illegal construction in the Protasiv Yar neighborhood in Kyiv, met with Smyrnov, who was then a lawyer for businessmen Gennady Korban and Oleg Levin, who were developing the project. Smyrnov tried to persuade Ratushny not to oppose the project, and Ratushny interpreted some of his statements as threats and later published an audio recording of the conversation. Smyrnov denied threatening Ratushny.
Smyrnov is also under investigation for allegedly helping Judge Mykola Chaus, a suspect in a bribery case, to escape Ukraine in 2016, the Slidstvo.Info investigative journalism site reported in March. Smyrnov did not respond to a request for comment on these accusations.
