KYIV – Bohdan Vitvitsky, a Ukrainian-born corruption expert from New Jersey, has joined a selection commission that will choose members of a newly created General Inspectorate at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
The move is part of an overall drive to fix the nation’s deeply flawed prosecutorial and justice system.
Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko made the announcement live on television on August 8.
Dr. Vitvitsky, who holds a juris doctor as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University, is a former U.S. federal prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney. He served as resident legal advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine in 2007-2009. Dr. Vitvitsky agreed to bring his American expertise to the newly created seven-member selection body.
Other members of the selection commission include Valentyna Telychenko, a prominent lawyer who represented Mr. Lutsenko in the European Court for Human Rights; Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, who sits on the board of corruption watchdog Transparency International Ukraine; and Yuriy Bielousov, a human rights activist.
Deputy Prosecutor General Anzhela Styzhevska will head the commission, although Dr. Vitvitsky is expected to be a “leader” of the selection body, Prosecutor General Lutsenko said.
“Today we’re summing up the preparatory phase of the General Inspection at the Prosecutor’s General office,” Mr. Lutsenko said. “The office is to supervise the legality of actions of prosecutors and investigators throughout the prosecutor system, which must be created from scratch.”
Dr. Vitvitsky declined to provide comment to The Ukrainian Weekly when reached by e-mail.
Other Ukrainians from the West have served or are in the current Ukrainian government. Among them are the current acting minister of health, Dr. Ulana Suprun, a radiologist from the Detroit area, who was appointed in July. Chicago native Natalie Jaresko served as finance minister in December 2014-April 2016. And Roman Zvarych of New York briefly served as justice minister in 2005 and 2006 for separate periods; he also was a three-term member of the Verkhovna Rada. And former U.S. federal judge and attorney Bohdan Futey was a constitutional consultant for the Ukrainian government in the 1990s.