KYIV – The Ukrainian government unleashed a new round of criminal investigations and arrests in recent weeks against Yanukovych administration functionaries, among them “the three odious judges” – as they’ve been widely labeled – who were involved in illegal rulings that drew global attention.
They join 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 – in being arrested by Ukrainian authorities in recent weeks. Another high-profile official, former Finance Minister Yurii Kolobov, was arrested by Spanish police on March 3.
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. 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.
“They’ve decided to target the most odious judges as demonstrative examples to show they’re ready to change something, particularly in the judicial branch,” said Petro Oleshchuk, a political science lecturer at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. “It’s a conscious strategy to select the most offensive people.”
Indeed, the public was treated to television footage of one of the arrested judges, Oksana Tsarevych, being instructed by a judge to wear an electronic bracelet as part of her house arrest imposed on March 11.
She and two other judges, Serhii Kytsiuk and Serhii Vovk, were targeted by Mr. Shokin just two days after his appointment. That day, February 12, he submitted an appeal to the Verkhovna Rada to arrest and hold the three on bail.
Parliament followed through on his request at its March 4 session, a day after the Supreme Court of Ukraine also offered its approval, and the Higher Qualification Commission of Judges heeded Mr. Shokin’s request that they be placed on leave for two months pending criminal investigations.
Experts said the three judges were targeted because of their role in the two most noteworthy cases of the Yanukovych administration, in which criminal charges were filed against former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Internal Affairs Minister Yurii Lutsenko.
Ms. Tsarevych and Mr. Kytsiuk participated in the trial – widely believed to be politically motivated – in which the state alleged that Ms. Tymoshenko had organized the 1996 murder of Yevhen Shcherban, a Donetsk businessman.
Yet the formal charge that Ms. Tsarevych and Mr. Kytsiuk face – issuing a premeditated unjust ruling – involves separate individuals in rulings made in January 2014.
Ms. Tsarevych also served alongside Mr. Vovk in hearing the state’s abuse of authority accusations against Mr. Lutsenko, which drew international attention after the European Court of Human Rights ruled his arrest was illegal.
Yet the formal charge that Mr. Vovk faces also involves a separate case in which he is alleged to have premeditatedly issued an unjust ruling in a civil case that deprived a rightful owner of his property.
Mr. Vovk was released on his own recognizance by two Kyiv courts, which rejected the procurator general’s request that he be arrested. Meanwhile, a Vinnytsia court imposed house arrest on Ms. Tsarevych and Mr. Kytsiuk (who received his electronic bracelet on March 13).
The fact that judges involved in the most controversial cases of the Yanukovych era are being charged with lesser crimes, and not those involving prominent politicians, indicates Mr. Poroshenko and his close entourage (which includes Mr. Lutsenko) want to avoid being accused of persecuting the opposition as Mr. Yanukovych had been, Mr. Oleshchuk said.
“They are trying to show it’s not political, but violations of their oaths and professional responsibilities,” he said. “If they pursued the high-profile crimes, it could be argued in a Western institution that the new government is persecuting its political enemies. For instance, Lutsenko was convicted, now he leads the president’s parliamentary faction and is using his authority to gain revenge.”
It also shows that the president is more interested in a demonstration for the public rather than serious punishment for criminals, said Mykhailo Basarab, a Kyiv political consultant. “The government is replacing a fight with current corrupt officials by targeting those of the previous regime. That’s simply revenge,” he said. “For the government to clear the path to reform, it must pursue officials currently engaged in corruption.”
An approach similar to that employed against “the three odious judges” was demonstrated by prosecutors in the case of Mr. Yefremov, the Luhansk mega-millionaire widely suspected of financing the separatists. Yet he was charged only with inciting ethnic tensions through some public remarks.
That indicates prosecutors had limited time to fulfill an order for a made-for-public prosecution from the president, Mr. Basarab commented. Instead of investing the time and effort, Mr. Poroshenko could be more interested in creating the general impression that politicians are being prosecuted, he said.
What’s certain is that, after a year of inaction, the order for all these arrests – including “the three odious judges,” Mr. Yefremov and Mr. Chechetov, who committed suicide on February 28 – came from Mr. Poroshenko directly, said several experts, including Mr. Basarab. That also means that the lack of action by the previous procurator general, Vitalii Yarema, between June and February also had the president’s approval, Mr. Basarab added.
“The question is: why hadn’t that happened for a year?” said Oles Doniy, a former national deputy and director of the Political Values Research Center in Kyiv. “Why has this happened only when society began to heavily criticize the procurator general and president? And why don’t these cases affect oligarchs and their financiers, but fall guys and bit players?”
The reason it’s taken a year lies in the Presidential Administration’s sophisticated approach to politics that actively employs polling organizations and sociological surveys, said Mr. Basarab. “They conduct research to learn the public’s attitudes,” he said. “The president’s performance depends on several key markers, among them the punishment of high-ranking officials. Society is demanding this. And when the public sentiment reached certain levels, the decision was made for much more active measures.”
When discontent was rising, the Presidential Administration decided Mr. Yarema should take as much negativity as possible during his tenure, Mr. Basarab said. “When the indicator reached the boiling point, the president dismissed him and released the steam of public dissatisfaction.”
So, while mid-tier functionaries have been arrested, criminal charges remain floating against Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle without any arrests.
Indeed, the speculation that they will emerge unscathed from their reign of terror was strengthened when four members of the entourage learned on March 6 that the European Union is dropping sanctions, consisting of freezes on assets and bank accounts, against them.
The four are former Presidential Administration deputy chief Andrii Portnov, former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) heads Oleksandr Yakymenko and Ihor Kalinin, and Oleksii Azarov, the son of former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.
At least one decision on removing sanctions was based on poorly completed documents submitted by the Procurator General’s Office (PGO) of Ukraine under the leadership of Mr. Yarema, said David Sakvarelidze, who served as first deputy procurator general under former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and was recruited to the PGO in December 2014 (when he gained Ukrainian citizenship).
The documents could have been fudged intentionally, he said.
“One of the leading individuals in the [Ukrainian] Procurator General’s Office said he suspects an investigator took a bribe of $7 million” to fudge the documents, he told the 112 television network in a bombshell revelation on March 8. “Of course, that’s an embarrassment, and such people shouldn’t represent your state and should be subject to concrete measures.”
The same PGO that claims to be fighting corruption has yet to announce any criminal investigations into Mr. Sakvarelidze’s claim, Mr. Doniy pointed out. “Who’s taking money in the Procurator General’s Office? If this information is available, why isn’t it investigated and resulting in consequences?” he asked.
Despite such revelations, Ukrainian prosecutors did succeed in filling out the necessary documents to secure the arrest of Mr. Kolobov, the finance minister under Mr. Yanukovych, who has been residing since August in his million-dollar home in the seaside resort town of Altea on the Spanish White Coast.
Spanish police arrested Mr. Kolobov on March 3, a move that wasn’t coordinated with the other arrests occurring in Kyiv around that time, Mr. Oleshchuk said. The challenge that Ukrainian law enforcement authorities now face is his extradition from Spain, which won’t be easy, he said.
“It’s a long procedure and not always with the desired effect,” he said, noting that Mr. Shokin said he has already begun preparing the necessary paperwork for extradition. “He won’t necessarily be transferred to Ukraine, moreover quickly.”
Mr. Kolobov is the highest Yanukovych administration official to be arrested thus far, besides Mr. Yefremov. Yet he was only on the periphery of “the family” and is a functionary whose arrest can be added to the category of “high-publicity public relations maneuvers,” Mr. Basarab said.
Another high-profile functionary, Kharkiv City Council Head (Mayor) Hennadii Kernes, was issued a notice for his suspected involvement in kidnapping and torture in Kharkiv during the Euro-Maidan protest. Since then, he has survived an assassination attempt that nearly took his life.
He has remained mayor of Kharkiv, playing to both the city’s pro-Russian crowd, with statements such as “I don’t believe Russia is engaging in aggression regarding Ukraine,” while at the same time succeeding in suppressing the separatist activity that had been boiling in the spring of 2014.
Last year, Mr. Kernes received a similar notice, which led to no arrest. The only explanation Mr. Doniy said he sees for the repeated pressure on Mr. Kernes by law enforcement authorities is a cheap attempt to blackmail him for money.
Meanwhile, Mr. Poroshenko is cooperating with Mr. Kernes because he’s as effective as any politician he’ll get in Kharkiv in maintaining order there, Mr. Basarab said. He thinks the notices have the president’s approval to get him to take certain steps, which Mr. Basarab said could be political or even personal, for all he knows.
“Kernes was one of the hawks of the Yanukovych regime,” he said. “He called for a bloody end to the Maidan, and was one of the main suppliers of ‘titushky’ to Kyiv. If the notices are being done to bring results for the nation as a whole, the public will approve. If Poroshenko or someone else is seeking personal gain, then it will cause more public dissatisfaction.”
The unfolding spectacle of notices, investigations and arrests – without any convictions so far – reminds political observers of 2005, when Mr. Shokin – a deputy procurator general at the time – was in charge of handling the arrest of well-known oligarchs accused of crimes.
In particular, Donetsk mega-millionaire Borys Kolesnikov was accused of making murder threats against a local businessman, Dnipropetrovsk billionaire Igor Kolomoisky was accused of attempted murder of a lawyer, and Kharkiv politician Yevhen Kushnaryov called for the separatism of the Kharkiv Oblast.
Mr. Kolesnikov was arrested and was in prison for two months before the charges were dropped, while Messrs. Kolomoisky and Kushnaryov were never arrested before their charges were dropped.
This time again, Mr. Shokin has made high-profile arrests, while failing to target key figures. Time will tell whether criminal convictions will result, though experts unanimously express doubt.
Mr. Oleshchuk said doesn’t even think the “three odious judges” will serve time in prison. “The Ukrainian judiciary is a large, mafia-like structure,” he said. “Its judges can’t ‘betray’ one another, since they all fulfill corrupt decisions that the government needs. That’s why the three judges didn’t flee abroad, even while suspecting they’d be arrested.”
Observers are equally concerned that these showy arrests are engineered to distract the public’s attention from the current corruption, which faces no systemic effort to combat it. Such failure is disappointing not only to the Ukrainian public, but also to more influential figures in the West.
For instance, the lack of efforts to combat corruption could have been a factor in the International Monetary Fund’s decision to limit the first tranche of its $17.5 billion loan announced in mid-March to only $5 million, instead of the $10 million that had been hoped for by Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, said Alexander Paraschiy, the head of research at Concorde Capital investment bank.
“The prosecution shouldn’t be fragmented with individuals like Yefremov or a few judges,” Mr. Basarab said. “It should be a wide-scale process, like the Nuremburg trials. The benches of the accused should be loaded with dozens of people responsible for theft, at a minimum, under the previous administration. These arrests and the beginning of these processes don’t speak to a systemic fight against corruption, which hasn’t declined in scale.”