KYIV – Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers this week registered a bill in parliament that would prematurely dismiss the head of a Western-funded graft-fighting agency to align it with a Constitutional Court ruling from August that nullified his appointment less than six years ago.
The bill stipulates new rules for appointing the director of the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) and is aimed at adhering to the court’s ruling that said the president didn’t have the authority to appoint Artem Sytnyk to head the agency, and was, thus, unlawful.
National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine
Artem Sytnyk
Mr. Sytnyk’s seven-year term is scheduled to end in April 2022.
The agency and anti-corruption watchdogs said the draft law would essentially “destroy” it as an independent crime-fighting body and give the president “manual” control over it.
In a statement on February 18, NABU said that there are a number of threats to its independence that affect the agency’s “real ability to counter and expose top-level corruption.”
Two days earlier, Kyiv-based Anticorruption Action Network head Vitaliy Shabunin said that, if passed, the draft laws “call into question the legitimacy of any decisions of the bureau’s management.”
On Facebook, Justice Minister Denys Malyuska said that, after discussing with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) an earlier version of the bill, which would’ve preserved the current NABU head’s post, he didn’t find the requisite support in Parliament.
Kyiv-based Dragon Capital noted in a daily message to investors that some of Mr. Sytnyk’s latest investigations at the bureau include a probe “into alleged embezzlement of funds for COVID-19 vaccine procurements [by the Ministry of Health] and its earlier investigation against one of [Mr.] Zelenskyy’s deputy chiefs of staff [Oleh Tatarov].”
Backsliding on graft-fighting efforts was a key reason for the IMF this week to keep a freeze on further lending to Ukraine, which is still pursuing about $700 million as part of an 18-month, $5 billion loan to stay afloat without damaging macroeconomic performance.
In a resolution on the far-reaching political and economic agreement between the EU and Ukraine on February 11, the European Parliament specifically noted that it has so far been “pleased with the work of the NABU.”
However, the same document voiced “regrets” over “attempts to attack and undermine anti-corruption institutions by members of the Verkhovna Rada, in particular attempts to dismiss the Director of NABU. …”
According to NABU, three main capabilities of the bureau will be either weakened or removed should the bill pass.
Combined, they would conclusively allow Mr. Zelenskyy an opportunity to appoint the next NABU chief by enabling the government to stack the hiring commission and external body that is supposed to independently audit the performance of the bureau on a yearly basis with people loyal to him.
Former President Petro Poroshenko had appointed Mr. Sytnyk in May 2015 following a competitive hiring process among 186 candidates to head the newly-created law enforcement body as part of a package of requirements set by the International Monetary Fund and European Commission for Ukraine to receive eased visa travel restrictions to the European Union.
“Whatever the West, the IMF or the Minister of Justice of Ukraine think about Artem Sytnyk’s performance, passing individual laws trying to solve problems with some individuals is not good in the long term,” wrote Kyiv-based Concorde Capital in a note to investors. “In the short term, fighting to keep NABU director in office or oust him can lead to delays in reaching the deal with the IMF and even spoil Ukraine’s relationships with its key Western partners backing [Mr.] Sytnyk.”
NABU said it is not giving up “hope for readiness for a constructive discussion, already in the Verkhovna Rada, and the adoption of a balanced decision in favor of society.”
The bureau started full-fledged operation with 70 detectives on August 25, 2015, after a competitive hiring process. Accountability is ensured through a civil oversight council of 15 members that include civil society activists that are elected yearly online.
Aside from the bureau’s deputy directors, all the employees of NABU are appointed for positions based on a competitive hiring process whose merit-based credentials are now in danger, according to the agency.
Dating to March 31, 2019, the bureau complained of its investigated cases not moving forward to prosecution in the courts, citing 47 out of 192 cases that were completed in the pre-trial stage and for which the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) had sent indictments.
In late December, the Prosecutor General’s Office, which has oversight over all criminal cases, took away the criminal case of presidential office deputy head Oleh Tatarov from NABU and transferred it to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Mr. Tatarov denies wrongdoing and is suspected of bribery in a large-scale property development scheme.