Yarema’s spokespeople, however, deny
the charges, saying there is nothing unusual in the pace of their investigations.
But critics are seeing the same old corruption,
nepotism and cronyism that have thwarted Ukraine’s drive to become a
democratic, rule-of-law based society. The lack of progress in punishing serious
crimes and corruption threatens to derail the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, costing him
the support of Ukrainians and supporters in the West.
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As far back
as July, Yegor Sobolev, head of the non-governmental Lustration Committee,
accused Yarema of getting the post “to preserve and
spearhead the (corrupt) schemes” that have flourished in Ukraine for years,
accelerating under the deposed administration of President Viktor Yanukovych.
With regard
to allegations of nepotism, Yarema has argued that he had nothing to do
with his son’s appointment to a top government position, while the son of Yarema’s deputy, Anatoly Danilenko, a target of
corruption accusations, has said that his property was acquired legitimately.
One of Yarema’s first decisions in the job was to scrap a new
law on prosecutors which would have forced the replacement of his whole staff
and required hiring through a competitive selection process. Anti-corruption
experts say such cleansing is badly needed.
Daryna
Kalenyuk, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, says investigations
are poorly organized and there are few qualified specialists.
Yarema, who is 50, is a career police officer. Oleksandr
Severyn, a human rights specialist, says
either lawyers or human rights activists should be appointed as the head of
office, which remains the most conservative of post-Soviet institutions.
Severyn said the only way to fix things is to
liquidate the Prosecutor General’s Office and transfer its functions to other
agencies. “This agency can’t be reformed,” he said. “It’s a product of the
Soviet system.”
Nepotism and
cronyism
Yarema has been accused of just about every
crime a high official can commit. Critics have lambasted Yarema for
forging a network of close friends and relatives who have landed cushy jobs at
the Prosecutor General’s Office and other agencies.
Valeriy, Yarema’s 26-year old
son, became head of the real estate registry department at the State
Registration Service in September. Asked to comment on the appointment, Yarema said
in September that his son was “an intellectual and highly moral” person and that he was
proud of him. He said the appointment would have to be explained by the Justice
Ministry, which controls the registration service.
Yarema’s brother Oleksandr is allegedly a close friend of a
suspected mafia boss, liga.net news
portal reported in September. The prosecutor’s office declined
to comment on either Valeriy Yarema or Oleksandr Yarema.
But the
person who has caused the most public outrage is Anatoliy Danylenko, a
close friend of Yarema’s and
now one of his deputies.
In September, Nashi
Groshi, an investigative TV project, reported that 140 hectares
of land and ponds in the Kyiv Oblast’s Vasylkiv district had been
illegally privatized by a firm that used to be owned by Danylenko’s son
Vyacheslav. The project also investigated a nearby luxury estate owned
by Anatoliy Danylenko.
Alina
Strizhak, a journalist at Nashi Groshi, said then that she and her family had
been threatened by an unknown man shortly before the investigation was
aired.
Vyacheslav Danylenko also
owns about five hectares of forestland in the village of Vorzel in
the Kyiv Oblast, public finance watchdog Nashi Groshi, a
related project, reported earlier in October.
It also
reported on Oct. 10 that companies linked to Danylenko’s family were running a
real estate business in Kyiv.
Following the
scandal, Anatoliy Danylenko was suspended from his duties
in September pending an investigation into the case. Yarema was reported to have taken a vacation
as of Oct. 13.
In the
meantime, the investigation into allegations against Danylenko was entrusted
to Ihor Biletsky, allegedly a close friend who owed his appointment to
Danylenko. The Prosecutor General’s Office declined to comment on the issue.
The list of
cronies who had allegedly made it into the Prosecutor General’s Office under Yarema’s protection and discovered by Ukraine’s media
has been snowballing since his appointment. It includes many names who are
linked to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime, among others.
Stalled investigations
Another
frequent criticism is that Yarema is dragging his feet on high-profile
investigations into money laundering, embezzlement, tax evasion and abuse of
power by Yanukovych’s entourage, known as The Family, that were opened after the
EuroMaidan Revolution. Most of the suspects have fled Ukraine.
Ihor Smeshko,
an adviser to President Petro Poroshenko, criticized the pace of the investigations at a briefing earlier in October. “I believe this to be a
threat for both internal and external security,” he said.
The prosecutor’s
office has been very secretive on the status of many of
these investigations, and confusing about others.
For example, prosecutors released
some information about the status of investigations to the Anti-Corruption
Action Center in June, but refused to do it later, citing laws on secrecy of
investigation, says Kalenyuk, head of the watchdog. “The prosecutor’s
office is silent about its successes,” she added.
In written
comments for the Kyiv Post, the prosecutors said a number of cases are being investigated
against Yanukovych’s entourage, but they could only be tried after the suspects
are detained.
“Since the
suspects have fled from investigators, we deem it impossible to complete the
investigation of these cases in a short period,” the office said. “After the
suspects are detained, and after necessary investigative and other procedures
are carried out, criminal cases and charges will be submitted to a court.”
However, on
Oct. 7 the Verkhovna Rada passed a bill allowing suspects to be tried in
absentia. The bill has yet to be signed by the president.
In another
case, the prosecutor’s office failed to even start cases that would prove the
criminal origin of some of the assets that have been frozen in other countries.
Kalenyuk of the Anti-Corruption
Action Center said that owners of the assets, such as ex-Prime Minister Mykola
Azarov, ex-Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov and Yanukovych’s elder son
Oleksandr, are using the prosecutor’s inaction to appeal government measures to
freeze the assets. She says they might succeed in unfreezing them.
When it comes
to assets in Ukraine, things are not much better.
Although prosecutors have seized
gas stations allegedly controlled by former Energy and Coal Minister Eduard
Stavitsky, they have not yet managed to formally take
over Yanukovych’s Mezhyhirya residence, his son’s All-Ukrainian
Development Bank or the Ukrainian Communal Bank, which belongs to major Party
of Regions apparatchik Oleksandr Yefremov.
The prosecutor’s
handling of the murder of at least 88 protesters and 12 police officers during the
EuroMaidan Revolution in February has also come under fire. Activists have
argued that it was going too slowly. Only three riot police officers and
four security service officers have been arrested, while some suspects have
managed to flee Ukraine.
One riot
police officer, Dmitry Sadovnik, who is accused of killing
39 EuroMaidan activists on Feb. 20,
was released by Kyiv’s Pechersky Court from a detention center and was put under
“partial house arrest” in September. He subsequently fled and is currently wanted by the
police.
Prosecutors launched
a probe against Svetlana Volkova, the judge who released Sadovnik, accusing
her of issuing an unlawful ruling. But, in its comments to the Kyiv Post,
the prosecutor’s office failed to specify whether the judge was suspended from
duty during the investigation.
The
office also said that a pre-trial investigation into the murders on
Maidan Nezalezhnosti had been completed, and defendants are currently
reading case files.
Dead cases
Critics have
also accused the prosecutor’s office of effectively refusing to
investigate cases against Mykhailo Dobkin, former governor of the Kharkiv Oblast,
and Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes, two key Yanukovych allies.
They
previously called for federalization of Ukraine, and in February they
presided over a congress of legislators from Ukraine’s southeastern regions
that sought secession.
The
Prosecutor General’s Office opened an investigation against Dobkin in February,
accusing him of infringing on Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and he was put
under partial house arrest in March. But in April he was released, and in
August the case against him was closed.
The office
told the Kyiv Post that experts who assessed Dobkin’s speeches had found that
no crime was committed.
In February
the Prosecutor General’s Office also initiated a criminal case against Kernes
on suspicion of kidnapping EuroMaidan activists, torture and murder threats.
Like Dobkin,
Kernes was put under partial house arrest in March and released in April. In
July the kidnapping case against him was suspended due to an attempt on Kernes’
life and the heavy injuries he suffered, though in August Interior Minister
Arsen Avakov wrote on Facebook that it had been resumed.
In September
the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement that it had also
resumed an abuse of power case against Yevhen Bakulin, former head of
Naftogaz, the national oil and gas company
that has been central to many corruption schemes in the sector over the past
decades.
The investigation against Bakulin started in March. He was arrested and a local court in Kyiv
originally ruled that his crimes were so grave that he would have to pay a bail
of Hr 1.5 billion to get out of jail. A month later that sum was reduced by 15
times, and he walked free. Later still, the case was closed.
The news
about the closure of the case caused public outcry, and the case was
resuscitated. Now, the prosecutor’s office told the Kyiv Post that the case has
never existed.
“No criminal
cases against the former head of Naftogaz Ukrainy have been recorded in the Single
Register of Pre-Trial Investigations by the Prosecutor General’s Office, and no
cases have been investigated,” the office wrote.
A similar fate
may have befallen the case that dealt with alleged corruption at the Information Center, a state company run by the Justice Ministry.
Tetyana
Chornovol, ex-head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, said in September that the
case had been closed. “Obviously the organizers of that scheme just paid
relevant people, and the cases were closed,” she said.
But the
Prosecutor General’s Office denied that the case had been closed in comments
sent to the Kyiv Post.
Kyiv Post
staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at reaganx84@gmail.com.
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