Prosecutors accused of protecting corrupt officials by blocking transfer of cases

Oleg Sukhov 

The Prosecutor General's Office is refusing to transfer some high-profile corruption cases to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Artem Sytnyk, head of the bureau, has said.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine's chief anti-corruption prosecutor, said on March 12 he had reached an agreement on the transfer of the cases with acting Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk. He said he expected the issue to be resolved next week.

Critics say the prosecutor's office wants to keep the cases to cover up for the officials involved, including allies of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

The Prosecutor General's Office has hit back against such allegations in a statement made on March 10 which claimed that the current Criminal Procedural Code does not require it to transfer such cases.

But the National Anti-Corruption Bureau maintains that it has the authority to request and acquire the cases, a right provided to it from the law on the establishment of the bureau.

In a statement issued on March 11, Sytnyk urged the Prosecutor General's Office to stop blocking the transfer of investigations to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and start complying with the law.

The bureau has requested about 10 cases from the prosecutor's office but prosecutors have not transferred them, Sytnyk said in a March 3 interview with Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, a weekly newspaper.

"Unfortunately, the Prosecutor General's Office keeps ignoring us," he added.

Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Post on March 12 that prosecutors' reluctance to transfer the cases was "linked to their unwillingness to investigate them."

The Prosecutor General's Office has consistently sabotaged these cases, and no progress on them has been made, she said.

Burying the bureau with criminal cases

The new approach of the Prosecutor General's Office seems to be the exact opposite of its previous position, according to Kaleniuk. 

In late 2015 the Prosecutor General's Office said it wanted to transfer about 2,500 corruption cases to the bureau in what critics see as an effort to swamp it with work and make it dysfunctional.

Kaleniuk said the bureau would have no resources to investigate the cases and would become a scapegoat if the cases failed.

Kaleniuk also said she believed many of the 2,500 cases were "rubbish" that would not prove anyone's guilt.

The plan to swamp the bureau with such cases failed, however, when Ukrainian authorities passed a law in January allowing the Prosecutor General's Office to keep investigating graft cases that it opened, with the exception of those that the bureau decides to request.

Mykola Martynenko

One of the cases that prosecutors are refusing to transfer is against Mykola Martynenko, an ex-lawmaker from Yatsenyuk's People's Front party, Sytnyk said.

Daria Manzhura, a spokeswoman for the bureau, said by phone that the case was linked to state-owned nuclear power firm Energoatom. Critics say no progress whatsoever has been made on the case since the Prosecutor General's Office opened it in 2014.

Currently, alleged graft schemes linked to Martynenko are being investigated by Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, as well as by Swiss, Austrian and Czech authorities.

Martynenko is suspected of accepting 30 million Swiss francs from Czech engineering firm Skoda for giving it a contract to supply equipment to Energoatom.

He has also been accused of links to a uranium supply scheme at Energoatom and a natural gas supply scheme at the Odesa Port Plant.

Martynenko has repeatedly denied all the accusations and described them as part of a smear campaign against him.

Arsen Avakov

Sytnyk also said they were seeking to take a case against Avakov from the Prosecutor General's Office.

Last July the Prosecutor General's Office opened an investigation into the supplies of backpacks produced by a firm allegedly linked to Avakov's family to the Interior Ministry.

In January activists published video footage featuring Avakov's son Oleksandr that critics say proves his involvement in the supply scheme.

Avakov denies the accusations.

Illegal amber production

Another case whose transfer the prosecutor's office is blocking, according to Sytnyk, is that against Oleh Nazaruk, a deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine's Rivne Oblast branch.

He is accused of taking a bribe for illegal amber production. Prosecutors have filed a notice of suspicion for Nazaruk but it was subsequently canceled by a court.

The Prosecutor General's Office claims that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau has no right to request the case because Nazaruk is not included in the category of officials who should be investigated exclusively by the bureau. Prosecutors also allege that the amount of the bribe is smaller than those the bureau is supposed to investigate.

But Manzhura said the case could involve several officials who must be investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the amounts of bribery could be much bigger. Under Ukrainian law, the bureau has a right to request not only cases against top officials involving large-scale corruption but also any cases that it deems necessary for carrying out other corruption investigations, Manzhura added.

One of the reasons why prosecutors are not willing to transfer the amber production case is alleged evidence that it could be linked to the leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Interior Ministry, Kaleniuk said.

"The investigation led the prosecutor's office to itself," she said. "This is one of the reasons why they are not transferring it." 

The prosecutor's office and the Interior Ministry did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the amber scheme.

Parliament blocking anti-corruption moves

Another government body that is sabotaging anti-corruption initiatives is the Verkhovna Rada, Sytnyk said.

Parliament ceased to be an ally of the bureau when it received real graft-fighting tools, he said, adding that lawmakers were afraid of being investigated.

For instance, the Verkhovna Rada is blocking a bill aimed at making the privatization of state companies more transparent, Sytnyk said.

He said some lawmakers were allegedly planning to divvy up state assets "at a discount" between themselves and promised to name them in the future.

He said that lawmakers were also thwarting the introduction of electronic property declarations for government officials.

Lawmakers are afraid not only of criminal liability for incorrect declarations but also of being punished for failing to explain the sources of their wealth if they declare it, Sytnyk said.

Last month the Verkhovna Rada passed a bill introducing electronic declarations but inserted numerous loopholes for corrupt officials and postponed responsibility for fraudulent declarations until next year.

The legislation has been harshly criticized by civil society and EU officials and was one of the reasons for a delay in switching to a visa-free regime with the EU. President Petro Poroshenko vetoed the bill on March 12 due to the criticism.

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