Ukraine will create a database of all officials who will not have the right to return to public service

In Ukraine, there is total sabotage of lustration, according to the Civil Lustration Committee. That is why its members and volunteers are beginning to create a database of all officials who will no longer have the right to return to public service. This is done to prevent any attempts to avoid dismissal. How every Ukrainian can help cleanse the authorities and what “Ya rema’s spectacle was played out” on air on Youth Plus explained by the head of the information department of the Civil Lustration Committee, Oleksandra Drik.

Since the start of the lustration law, we have been working to help people understand that lustration is happening, but more importantly, what lustration is. People sometimes confuse lustration with corruption; they confuse it with punishment. Lustration is really not punishment; it is only a criterion for officials who work in state positions. Our task is to convey this to people, to make them understand that this is the first step toward cleansing the authorities. After that, the punishment of the guilty will take place.

During the first wave, the so-called automatic lustration, and during the second wave, these are lustration checks, there is total sabotage. We have identified many people who were not dismissed from their posts, although they fall under automatic lustration. Automatic is one criterion: if a person cumulatively worked in state positions during the Yanukovych era within one year.

In the unified register of lustrated persons there are now fewer people than those who were actually dismissed. The law gives officials who understand that they will not pass the lustration check the right to resign voluntarily. And they do not get into the state register of lustrated persons.

The reluctance of people who hold state posts to leave these posts more than anything else indicates that they used them for personal enrichment rather than to serve the state. About half of the officials are now trying to appeal their dismissal in courts, most of them are prosecutors.

We have developed a system on our website—a digital system for submitting complaints. It allows you to select an official, the criterion under which he falls, and send any information that may concern this official. Unfortunately, today a lot of such complaints come in like: “a neighbor said,” so we also run informational and explanatory work in parallel.

Of course, most of the complaints that come in have a corruption component. We do not discard them. Although they do not fall under lustration. But we cooperate with the Public Council of Lustration under the Ministry of Justice, where most journalists are; we pass these cases to them for investigation. And we already have several interesting examples. For instance, about Yuri Dvoryk. We received a complaint in which a person spoke about his almost criminal activity. And one journalist, Denys Bigus, conducted an investigation. He found that his son, a prosecutor of the Darnytskyi district, did not declare property: real estate, a car, an apartment, and thus he implicated two people at once. Here is such an interesting example. And we have many such cases, unfortunately; it takes a lot of time.

And we started collecting information about those who resigned themselves (because they would fall under lustration anyway, just later) in manual mode. So that in six months to a year they would not return to work in state bodies. We are compiling a list of civil servants who fall under automatic lustration, even those who have already resigned. We must sit down manually and check everyone; it is “hellish work,” but it is worth it—we will have a database of all officials who will never have the right to return to public service.

We collected all declarations manually. Volunteers—where they found internet, there they work. Journalist Denys Bigus issued a call on Facebook and gathered 3000 volunteers; they now decipher declarations, verify. Biographies are checked.

Although civil servants hide those pieces of biography that fall under lustration. You go to the site: yes, yes, there is a biography… bam! there is no information for 4 years.

Investigations are not fast. And now we have about 20 such investigations in progress.

In complaints that specifically concern officials who fall under lustration, it is usually about crimes they committed, including during Euromaidan, including in their work with 10 to 14 year. We check these people, verify the information provided, and then send this information to the Public Council, distribute this information to the media.

And we already have interesting examples. For instance, there is a certain Dmytro Isaienko, Deputy Minister of Regional Development. Checks of deputy ministers begin in March, but we already know that this check would not pass. But an unexpected fact—he received veteran status in the ATO zone. We achieved that he was forced to sign a statement renouncing this status. Now a criminal case is opened against him. Work of this kind helps “cleanse” the government.

After criminal proceedings began against Isaienko, the second deputy of the same minister voluntarily submitted a statement renouncing the ATO status. Yehor Sobolev said that Isaienko himself said that he had never been in ATO.

I understand where this desire in people comes from, why there is “junk” lustration. But we do not support “junk” lustration; we do not encourage people to do this, because it has nothing to do with European values, with legality that we want to establish in Ukraine. If you throw a person into the trash, nothing will happen. He will simply take off this trash and go to work somewhere else. What is the point of that? It only makes for a pretty picture on camera. But nothing will change. Therefore, everything must be done by the law.

Now the stage of lustration checks is underway. The check of each official lasts 2 months, at least 2 months. Unlike the first stage—automatic, where there was only one criterion, here many criteria are checked. Requests are sent to the State Fiscal Service, to law enforcement agencies. Officials verify the declaration, verify their connections with the KGB, and so on. In a few weeks we expect the first results of the first check. And this concerns the higher echelons of the state—the law enforcement agencies, higher courts, and so on.

Now a working group has been formed to develop amendments to the law. The law will be developed in several directions. The first is the lustration of judges. The law will be refined so that there are more opportunities to cleanse the courts themselves.

Another issue concerns ATO. The problem is not that one or several people received ATO status, but that the authorities use this instrument to sabotage lustration. And here you do not need to fight specific examples; you need a systematic approach to forming this body that grants ATO status. Currently it is a commission that, unfortunately, cannot deny people because their documents are in order. So this issue must be regulated at the stage when these documents are issued. In other words, it is a whole system of state bodies, and you must approach it as systematically as you approach the lustration process itself.

Attorney General Yarema and the prosecutor of Donetsk region, Mykola Frantovskyi, staged a whole performance. ATO participant Prosecutor Frantovskyi received it only after 3 months after he should have been dismissed under automatic lustration. Along with him, these ATO status were granted to another 26 prosecutors.

Deputy Pavlo Kostenko went with the deputy attorney general Oleg Bachun’s declaration to a meeting with Yarema (on the committee) and asked: “explain where such money, so many apartments, cars come from for Deputy Attorney General Bachun?” And he said this is all a lie! But here is the declaration! They asked for the committee transcript. They did not give it to us: they said there is none.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty