Zahorodniy: anti-corruption prosecutor — a tool of pressure on political opponents

Zahorodniy: anti-corruption prosecutor — a tool of pressure on political opponents

Laws are written in such a way that the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office depends on the General Prosecutor’s Office in terms of budget allocation, Taras Zahorodniy, managing partner of the National Anti-Crisis Group, said on the air of Golos Stolitsi radio. According to him, the anti-corruption prosecutor will become a tool for clarifying relations between politicians.

First Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kas’ko gave an interview to one of the Ukrainian publications in which he spoke about the details of the loudest cases, and also about whether the prosecutor’s system will change after the reform. For example, according to the deputy head of the GPG, cases involving Yuriy Ivanyuschenko, former vice prime minister Serhiy Arbuzov, and Oleksandr Yanukovych are at risk. Mr. Kas’ko also explained why the case of the “diamond prosecutors” has been investigated for so long and is being handed to court.

Taras Zahorodniy, managing partner of the National Anti-Crisis Group, on Golos Stolitsi radio, noted that finishing high-profile cases isn’t allowed by the low level of training of law enforcement officers.

According to the deputy prosecutor general, even after the creation of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, the broadest powers will still be held by the attorney general, and accordingly, he will bear responsibility. Why then are anti-corruption prosecutors needed?

— If we rephrase the Ukrainian proverb, they say what they saw with their own eyes. A law was passed that set out such a procedure that effectively the anti-corruption prosecutor is completely dependent. He has neither his own balance, so to speak, nor his own disposal of funds; he is dependent on the attorney general for all 150. This is a question for the deputies who passed such laws, and for the EU, which also did not have objections to this law, if I’m not mistaken. Perhaps they have such a practice, but in Ukrainian realities, most likely the anti-corruption prosecutor will become a typical tool for clarifying political relations.

Experts say that it is impossible to create an anti-corruption prosecutor’s office as an independent body, because that would violate the Constitution...

— That’s correct. But I don’t understand in which part the Constitution did not allow creating, for example, a separate balance for the anti-corruption prosecutor. The issue here is money, i.e., who allocates the budgets for the anti-corruption prosecutor, who pays his salary, not whom he reports to. This wasn’t done, and in fact the anti-corruption prosecutor will be dependent both on the attorney general and on the Presidential Administration.

Then what should we expect from the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office?

— It will be as boisterous a simulation of activity, a fight against corruption, as we see now. We see a pile of reports that someone was caught taking a bribe of two thousand hryvnias in some remote village, while real bribes pass through central authorities, through courts, where the amount runs into tens of thousands of dollars. The anti-corruption prosecutor’s office will be used as a tool to clarify relations within political groupings, because there is no system in the country that would allow earning money another way than redistributing property. And this is an additional instrument for redistributing property and pressuring political opponents.

By the way, MP Mykola Martynenko, whom Serhiy Leshchenko accused of corruption, said he is resigning his mandate as a deputy. If the Verkhovna Rada still accepts his statement, should we expect that all these accusations will be checked?

— Serhiy Leshchenko has had many slips, when the information was unreliable. Besides, such an experienced fighter in political battles as Martynenko wouldn’t renounce parliamentary immunity if he wasn’t confident that nothing would happen to him.

And what awaits the well-known cases of Lukash, Mosiychuk, Orbán (Korbán), and Yefremov? Considering that even in the GPO they acknowledge certain problems with the preparation of the evidentiary base, should we expect any court verdicts?

— I wouldn’t lump these cases together. By the way, the Korban case demonstrated a low level of professional training in law enforcement agencies; they cannot assemble an evidentiary base. Previously, how did our judicial system work? There were courts, the police, the prosecutor’s office, and there was an informal understanding that the court would turn a blind eye to certain moments. Now, when there are cases that are clearly political and ordered, judges feel this and say, ‘We will now work by the law, because the next regime will come and sweep us away for this.’ And when they start working by the law, cases in court fall apart, i.e., there is no qualification.

Earlier on Golos Stolitsi, Vitaliy Shabunin, head of the board of the Center for Counteracting Corruption, said that the Anti-Corruption Bureau was selected on a competitive basis with 70 detectives instead of the planned 100. He also said that the hired NABU employees have nowhere to work, and the position of head of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office remains vacant.

At the same time, anti-corruption and human rights organizations compiled their list of 10 candidates for the competition commission to select the anti-corruption prosecutor. As senior correspondent Oleksandr Ivasyvka said on Golos Stolitsi, the list includes two foreigners.

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