Corruption and lack of reforms
Ukraine’s top law enforcement officer, Procurator General Vitaliy Yarema, submitted his resignation on February 9 amid mounting criticism of his failure to prosecute any officials in the Yanukovych administration for alleged economic crimes, violence against the historic Euro-Maidan protest and separatism in the Donbas region. “It’s very good that we achieved the resignation of the procurator general, who showed no results,” Self-Reliance National Deputy Yegor Sobolev told the February 10 parliamentary session during which Mr. Yarema’s resignation was approved. “That’s the first time in Ukrainian history that a procurator general left who suited the president, suited the majority of political forces but didn’t suit society.”
Mr. Yarema resigned ahead of a February 17 report in the Wall Street Journal that stated the European Union would soon begin to drop sanctions against members of Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage – starting with four out of 22 targeted – for lack of evidence provided by the Ukrainian government to back up corruption allegations. “I stated several months ago that, in the event that EU sanctions are removed from the Yanukovych entourage through the fault of the procurator general, Vitaliy Yarema should be held politically responsible and resign,” wrote National Deputy Serhiy Leshchenko on his Facebook page the same day as the resignation.
To replace Mr. Yarema, the Verkhovna Rada on February 10 approved the president’s nomination of Viktor Shokin, who had served as deputy procurator general since December 2004. Fiery debate preceded the vote in which critics warned he’d perform just as badly as Mr. Yarema, having served at the heart of Ukraine’s corrupt law enforcement system for more than a decade, including under the Yanukovych administration.
The Ukrainian government soon afterwards unleashed a new round of criminal investigations and arrests against Yanukovych administration functionaries, among them “the three odious judges” – as they were widely labeled – who were involved in illegal rulings that drew global attention. They are two other Yanukovych functionaries of a higher profile – the former chair of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction, Oleksandr Yefremov, and his deputy, the late Mykhailo Chechetov – were arrested by Ukrainian authorities. Mr. Chechetov, a key functionary in the Party of Regions most famous for leading the January 2014 vote in the Verkhovna Rada for what was dubbed the dictatorship laws, was found dead on February 28 outside his 17th floor apartment in what was determined by police to be suicide. Just a week earlier, a Kyiv court had ordered that Mr. Chechetov, 61, be placed under house arrest.
“At first glance, the efforts of the new procurator general, Viktor Shokin, would inspire optimism that President Petro Poroshenko is finally punishing the crimes committed under his predecessor after a year of inaction,” Mr. Zawada wrote. “But political experts contacted by this correspondent insist the latest moves are largely for show and to cool boiling public discontent, and may not even lead to punishment. All the key insiders of the administration of President Viktor Yanukovych remain at large, many hiding in the Russian Federation, and some have even begun to get their sanctions dropped by the European Union.”
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine was finally launched on April 16 by President Poroshenko at a ceremony in which he revealed its first head will be Artem Sytnyk, a former prosecutorial investigator who has distinguished himself with investigations that led to incarcerations. The announcement came after months of delay in creating the bureau and criticism that the government wasn’t doing enough to address corruption.
“Everything’s in the hands of the new chair. He has time, society’s support and healthy forces,” said Mustafa Nayyem, a national deputy with the Poroshenko Bloc. “Mr. Sytnyk can go down in history as the first fighter against corruption, who was able to put behind bars top-tier officials, from ministers to judges, prosecutors, etc. Or he can become yet another inglorious official from the dark masses.” Mr. Sytnyk was granted exceptional authority – with influence rivaling other top law enforcement officials – in accordance with legislation approved by Parliament in October 2014 that created the bureau and then amended in February of this year. His task is to uncover crimes at the highest levels of government and conduct pre-trial investigations, without any politician having the legal authority to interfere with the bureau’s work.
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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko presents former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as the new head of the Odesa Oblast State Administration to local residents on May 30.
Amidst rising criticism that reforms in Ukraine were proceeding too slowly, President Poroshenko in late May appointed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as head of the Odesa Oblast State Administration to lead the president’s initiatives in the region, as well as oversee the spending of funds earmarked by the central Kyiv budget. Mr. Saakashvili is among the most popular post-Soviet politicians in Ukraine and the West after leading reforms that turned Georgia into a competitive economy. He has a long history in Ukraine, having studied alongside Mr. Poroshenko in Kyiv and learned the Ukrainian language. Mr. Saakashvili had spent recent months criticizing the Ukrainian government for failing to quickly carry out needed reforms.
Odesa is among the main sources of corruption in the Ukrainian economy, being the nation’s biggest port and having a reputation for contraband for decades, dating back to the Soviet era. Odesa is also the nation’s third-largest city, behind Kyiv and Kharkiv. In presenting Mr. Saakashvili, the president referred to him as an “independent, decisive person” and assigned him the priorities of deoligarchization, fighting corruption, ensuring transparency in the state customs and tax-collecting services, and defending the rights of citizens. As 2015 drew to a close, a lot remained to be done in Odesa.
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Some of the first graduates of a new training program for Kyiv patrol police.
On June 18, the Verkhovna Rada voted to approve President Poroshenko’s request to dismiss Valentyn Nalyvaichenko as head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). While the president argued that Mr. Nalyvaichenko had failed to fulfill his responsibilities, Mr. Poroshenko’s critics argued that the dismissal was revenge for Mr. Nalyvaichenko’s unapproved attempts to eliminate the president’s allies – alleged to be corrupt – from both the SBU and the Procurator General’s Office. The conflict over Mr. Nalyvaichenko, who some alleged was aligned with oligarch Dmytro Firtash, was the biggest since the coalition government emerged in November 2014. Most political observers commented that the conflict was merely the latest chapter in the power struggle among Ukraine’s oligarchs, including Mr. Poroshenko himself.
Another Yanukovych insider who eluded arrest was Serhii Kliuyev, who apparently fled the country within days after Ukraine’s Parliament voted on June 3 to strip him of his political immunity. By June 10, he was declared missing by Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the internal affairs minister, who confirmed a week later in Parliament that he fled to Russia through the occupied territories of Donbas. The government’s failure to make arrests of key Yanukovych officials infuriated critics, who believed that top state officials could have reached deals enabling their avoidance of detention and prosecution for their alleged crimes. “I think that I’m not alone in suspecting that a non-aggression pact, a ring of protection exists between the current and past leadership of the country,” said National Deputy Yegor Sobolyev, chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Preventing and Countering Corruption.
Charges of selective justice emerged yet again with the case of Hennadiy Korban, a business associate of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who was arrested on October 31 and charged with stealing from the private Country Defense Fund, as well as organizing the kidnapping of two government officials. In his defense, Mr. Korban said through his lawyers that he didn’t steal from the fund, which he himself had created to aid the war effort, and that he had no involvement in any kidnappings. Mr. Korban’s arrest sparked mixed reactions among the public, with many saying the president was targeting his opponents.
Mr. Poroshenko was widely criticized also for pursuing his business interests while serving as president, and there were allegations in September that he was involved in orchestrating attempts to bribe national deputies from the Radical Party faction to remain in the coalition government. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk also was suspected of involvement in corruption scandals; indeed, such accusations were made by Mr. Saakashvili, head of the Odesa Oblast State Administration. Mr. Saakashvili told Channel 5 television: “All the oligarch interests control the Ukrainian government.” He also spoke about the lack of reforms: “Decisions about reforms are not being made. …What the government is calling reforms, I can’t call reforms.” The result of Mr. Saakashvili’s TV interview was a war of words with the prime minister.
Procurator General Shokin himself was the target of much criticism from the West. His integrity and credibility were called into question after he resisted European Union recommendations that he replace the four prosecutors he had appointed to a commission to establish a Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. These prosecutors were identified by Transparency International as Yanukovych administration holdovers who were loyal to the current president and would compromise the independence of the specialized prosecutor’s office.
Criticism that had been circulating among Western circles became public in late September, when U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said in a speech to the Odesa Financial Forum that corrupt prosecutors are “openly and aggressively undermining reform.” Ambassador Pyatt underscored: “the true measure of Ukraine’s commitment to fight corruption is the number of officials from the current administration in prison for corruption. The authorities’ willingness to prosecute all corrupt officials and oligarchs, regardless of their political party or personal wealth, is a critical indicator of its commitment to the rule of law. On this indicator, Ukraine post-Revolution of Dignity still comes up short.”
EU Representative to Ukraine Jan Tombinski warned that the consequences extended beyond Ukraine’s dysfunctional law enforcement system. In an October 22 letter to Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin, Mr. Tombinski warned that the failure to launch by year’s end the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and, in turn, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, would cost Ukrainians their visa-free regime planned for launch in 2016.
But there was some good news in the battle against corruption and implementation of reform in Ukraine. A graduation ceremony of new Kyiv patrol police officers trained with the support of the project coordinator in Ukraine of the OSCE was held on July 2. According to the official website of the government of Ukraine, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk presented certificates to the graduates and greeted them by saying: “Millions of Ukrainians have hope in you. And each of you will take an oath of loyalty to the Ukrainian nation. You are the new face of Ukraine. You are the new Ukrainian police. You are also the representatives of our new European Ukraine.”
The establishment of the new patrol police in the Ukrainian capital, initiated in January by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was the first step in nationwide police reform. Over 33,000 persons – 35 percent of them women – applied and undertook tests to evaluate their general and individual skills, as well as health and physical abilities. As a result of the selection, about 2,000 recruits underwent initial training courses between April and June. “We are going step by step in developing police reform in Ukraine,” said Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov. He said some 6,000 new police officers would be trained by the end of the year and that about 170,000 police officers require re-training country-wide.
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Participants at the rally of mourning held on May 18 on Kyiv’s Independence Square to mark the 71st anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatar people.
On November 25, a group of activists, including 15 national deputies of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc – most of whom were involved in the Euro-Maidan – announced they were forming a group, the Anti-Corruption Platform, within the faction to expose and fight corruption both within their faction and beyond. The announcement came a day after a closed-door meeting of faction deputies in which the reformists accused establishment politicians of not only indulging their own corrupt business schemes, but even undermining their reform projects. “These were situations of the so-called ‘deoligarchization’ that began last year but was never completed and it’s happening now, when each of us is being persecuted and being destroyed in the media. All of our attempts to bring this information to the country’s leadership, to the procurator general, to law enforcement bodies merely ended with us being on our own. We decided to unite our efforts,” said Mr. Nayyem.