KYIV – Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Bohdan Vitvitsky’s office is one door down from the one that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko occupies. It’s located on the premises where authorities say Viktor Pshonka, the former prosecutor general under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, had taken part in embezzling 69 million hrv ($2.7 million) of taxpayers’ money while renovating the building three years ago.
Now Dr. Vitvitsky, whose parents hail from Kolomyia in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, is working on an encore career to help raise public trust in one of Ukraine’s consistently least trusted institutions – the very same Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO).
It’s a Soviet-era institution of some 15,000 employees, known for scuttling high-profile graft and homicide investigations rather than prosecuting them, and one that his colleague, human rights lawyer Valentyna Telychenko, has described as a “mafia” in previous interviews.
Both sit on the newly created seven-member commission that will eventually choose over 80 inspector generals who Mr. Lutsenko said “will supervise the legality of actions of prosecutors and investigators throughout the prosecution system,” according to an August 8 televised meeting with the former U.S. federal prosecutor.
Dr. Vitvitsky, who functions as an advisor to the prosecutor general, told The Ukrainian Weekly on September 5 that “their charge is to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse,” a task identical to one their American counterparts have at various government departments and agencies.
“In Ukraine, they’re going to be substantially independent. They won’t be appointed by the president. One of the six deputy heads of the PGO is the head of the appointment commission,” Dr. Vitvitsky explained. “Basically, we function collaboratively. Four members are outsiders, that is, they are non-PGO.”
Over 140 candidates have submitted applications as of September 2. And Dr. Vitvitsky expects that number to at least double by the September 12 deadline when the commission starts to review them. Those who clear the technical requirements will be offered two voluntary tests, one on legal knowledge, and the other on general reasoning and analytical abilities, before the finalists are chosen.
Dr. Vitvitsky, who was also the resident legal adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine in 2007-2009, doesn’t exaggerate his role at the PGO.
“I wasn’t looking for this. It was presented as an opportunity to be helpful in some way that might have a little bit of an impact. It was valuable and important enough for me to drop what I was doing to come here,” he said.
Acknowledging that Ukraine’s form of corruption is more on the “systemic side of the scale opposite the episodic,” Dr. Vitvitsky said: “I’m forward-focused, I like to find ways to be helpful, and there’s no shortage of things to do here.”
One way he has been useful came during a public spat between the PGO and the newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), which focuses solely on official corruption. On August 12 the two agencies clashed. Two NABU operatives were conducting surveillance on prosecutors that day and were detained. Cross-allegations of torture and beatings ensued.
Dr. Vitvitsky decided to mediate, which later led to a joint news conference “to demonstrate to Ukrainian society that a mistake had taken place and… the entities that were in conflict with one another understand that sort of thing should not happen again,” he said.
He added: “Rivalries are always fine, public conflicts are not under any circumstances. That’s been my advice to everybody.”
The incident may have been prevented had Dr. Vitvitsky headed the NABU. His application for the post was disqualified in March 2015 because he was older than the 65-year age limit.
The retired prosecutor is now involved in an inquiry whose goal is to find out what happened and offer suggestions so that “this doesn’t happen again.” In addition to the PGO and the NABU, officers from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) are also part of the inquiry.
Dr. Vitvitsky, who specialized in prosecuting and investigating complex financial fraud in New Jersey, is also currently drafting a set of proposals to “raise the level of rule law” and for the judiciary and procuracy to “act more professional and with greater integrity.”
“Both have to take place at the same time, because reform otherwise won’t work. I’ve been working on a draft of proposals to help the PGO move in that direction… At some point, I expect to offer those suggestions to Mr. Lutsenko,” he said.
At the same time, he dismissed the notion that he might be used as “window dressing,” of which some other foreign technocrats have accused the government before quitting. Among them was Aivaras Abromavicius, an investment banker from Lithuania who was the economy minister from December 2014 until his resignation in February 2016.
Dr. Vitvitsky said: “I don’t know what the motivation was [for recruiting me]… My focus is try to be helpful… Whether that was planned all along, or in spite of what somebody thought, I can’t tell you that.”
But he made it clear that he doesn’t “take marching orders from anybody here in terms of the PGO.”
Growing up in Detroit until he moved to New York for graduate studies at the age of 21 and then remained on the East Coast, Dr. Vitvitsky holds a juris doctor as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. He said his presence in Kyiv is more about “caring about Ukraine and its people.”
“I was touched by what happened during the Maidan. I’m sensitive for yearnings of fairness, justice insofar as the Orange and Maidan revolutions had a lot of participants who expressed a strong desire for a more normal country, one with lower levels of corruption, with higher levels of rule of law, higher levels of fairness and justice – that’s something that resonates with me,” he underscored.