Top five reformers
1. Kateryna Gandziuk
Kateryna Gandziuk, a whistleblowing municipal official, died in a hospital on Nov. 4 after numerous operations following an acid attack on her in Kherson on July 31. Up to 40 percent of her body had been seriously burned.
Police have arrested five suspects in her murder, all former war veterans from the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, an offshoot of the nationalist Right Sector group. All have admitted their involvement in the attack.
In November, Igor Pavlovsky – an aide to Mykola Palamarchuk, a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc – was charged as an organizer of the murder. Pavlovsky denied accusations of wrongdoing.
The police’ reluctance to investigate the murder led to speculation that Interior Ministry and police officials and their allies could be linked to the attack. Interior Ministry official Artem Shevchenko denied the allegations.
2. Larysa Golnyk
Larysa Golnyk from Poltava’s Oktyabrsky Court is one of Ukraine’s few whistleblower judges.
In October, the High Qualification Commission of Judges blocked Golnyk from applying for a job at the High Anti-Corruption Court due to a reprimand issued for a Facebook post criticizing the authorities. However, she sees the move as revenge for her whistleblowing activities.
In 2015, Golnyk published video footage featuring then Poltava Mayor Oleksandr Mamai pressuring her to close a case against him and his former deputy Dmytro Trikhna unsuccessfully trying to bribe her in exchange for closing it. They deny accusations of wrongdoing.
3. Halya Chyzhyk
Halya Chyzhyk is a member of the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog.
She has been involved in efforts to cleanse the judiciary and block the appointment of discredited judges to the Supreme Court and the High Anti-Corruption Court. However, the High Qualification Commission of Judges has sabotaged these efforts.
In March, the Public Integrity Council suspended its participation in the commission’s qualification assessment, or vetting, of incumbent judges, saying new High Qualification Commission regulations had effectively blocked the council’s work. In September, the Supreme Court sided with the Public Integrity Council and recognized the High Qualification Commission’s new regulations as unlawful.
4. Sergii Gorbatuk
Sergii Gorbatuk, head of the in absentia investigations unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office, has gained the reputation of being one of Ukraine’s few outspoken and honest prosecutors.
In July his unit, which is responsible for investigations into the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, was split into two departments, with Gorbatuk becoming the head of the investigation unit and Oleksiy Donsky becoming the head of the prosecution unit.
Gorbatuk attributed the restructuring to his criticism of the authorities’ alleged shady dealings with ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s associates. The Prosecutor General’s Office denied the accusations, saying the restructuring was in line with the concept of separating investigative and prosecution functions.
Meanwhile, the High Qualification and Discipline Commission of Prosecutors on Dec. 12 punished Donsky, who is also known as an independent whistleblower, by banning him from promotions for six months.
5. Hanna Solomatina
The Kyiv Administrative District Court on Dec. 7 rejected whistleblower Hanna Solomatina’s lawsuit to be reinstated at the National Agency for Preventing Corruption (NAPC).
Solomatina said in 2017 that the NAPC was involved in large-scale corruption and was completely controlled by the Presidential Administration. The NAPC and the Presidential Administration denied the accusations.
Solomatina published what she says is correspondence in which Oleksiy Horashchenkov, a Presidential Administration official, tries to give her orders. In July Horashchenkov was fired from the Presidential Administration.
Top five anti-reformers
1. Petro Poroshenko
While President Petro Poroshenko champions himself as the leader of Ukraine’s reforms and corruption fight, his critics and record tell a different story. Often, the achievements are grudging and come under pressure from Western backers, civic activists and public opinion. Exhibit A is his reversal on the anti-corruption court — going from full-scale opposition to support, meanwhile wasting more than a year as the court still does not exist.
He and his protégés at the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission of Judges have done little to increase public trust in the courts. They are accused of blocking and sabotaging judicial reform with the appointment of corrupt and dishonest judges. Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, an appointee and loyalist of Poroshenko, is a failure. Poroshenko and his dominant 139-member faction in parliament are also suspected of obstructing the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and covering up for discredited Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky.
2. Arsen Avakov
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov bears responsibility for the failure of police reform and the continued employment of corrupt and discredited police officers. He has also been implicated in numerous corruption scandals.
Videos published last year show a person who resembles Yury Goluban, a top police official, in the company of Russian proxy fighters in the Donbas. Goluban, who said the videos could have been faked, has not been fired by Avakov’s Interior Ministry.
In July, Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky’s office closed an embezzlement case against Avakov’s son, Oleksandr Avakov, and the minister’s ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar despite massive evidence against them, including alleged video footage of them discussing a corrupt deal. They deny the accusations of wrongdoing.
3. Yuriy Lutsenko
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has failed to cleanse and reform the prosecution service and has not achieved any meaningful progress in high-profile investigations.
Instead, he has channeled his energy into obstructing major cases – for instance, the one into the Nov. 4 death of whistleblower Kateryna Gandziuk and cases of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
Lutsenko has denied the accusations, presenting the confiscation of $1.5 billion linked to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych as his major achievement. However, the court ruling on the confiscation was classified as secret for unknown reasons, and lawyers and activists have questioned its legal validity and said it was a result of a shady backroom deal.
Lutsenko’s deputies Eugene Enin and Anzhela Stryzhevska met with ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky, a suspect in a theft case, in 2016 in a hotel in Tel Aviv in Israel to negotiate the charges against him, according to an audio recording of the meeting leaked to Slidstvo.Info and published on June 9. The recording implies that the investigators could have conspired with the ex-minister, who has been wanted for embezzlement since 2014, in a backroom deal to soften the charges against him.
The journalists also released an audio recording of a call between a man sounding like Stavytsky and an unidentified mediator, whom he refers to as “Kolya.” They discuss the future meeting with Stryzhevska, and “Kolya” says he will bring and offer her “200” – presumably a bribe of $200,000. Stryzhevska and Enin denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
4. Nazar Kholodnytsky
In April the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine released audio recordings in which Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky is heard pressuring anti-corruption prosecutors and courts to stall cases, urging a witness to give false testimony, and tipping off suspects about future searches. Kholodnytsky confirmed that the tapes were authentic but said they had been taken out of context.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center has also accused Kholodnytsky of blocking cases against Interior Minister Arsen Avakov’s son Oleksandr, Vishneve Mayor Ilya Dikov, General Pavlo Tkachuk, ex-State Aviation Service Chief Denys Antonyuk, executives of tycoon Dmytro Firtash’s Zaporizhzhia Titanium and Magnesium Plant and People’s Front party lawmaker Georgy Logvynsky. Other cases allegedly derailed by Kholodnytsky include those against State Health Inspection Service Chief Svyatoslav Protas; ex-Central Election Commission Chairman Mykhailo Okhensovsky; Arsen Isaakyan, head of the State Innovative Finance and Credit Institution, and Natalia Korchak, head of the National Agency for Preventing Corruption.
Kholodnytsky’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the accusations.
5. Serhiy Kozyakov
Serhiy Kozyakov, the head of the High Qualification Commission of Judges, is blamed for the failure of judicial reform, while he sees it as a success.
In 2017, Kozyakov and his fellow commission members appointed 30 Supreme Court judges who had been vetoed by the Public Integrity Council over violations of professional ethics and integrity standards. The council said it had grounds to believe that the Supreme Court competition had been rigged in favor of government loyalists, although the commission denied the accusations.
Kozyakov’s qualification assessment, or vetting, of judges has also failed. Out of the 2,038 judges assessed, so far only 119 judges, or 5.8 percent, have been found to be not worthy of holding a judicial job.
Meanwhile, there are accusations that Kozyakov’s commission manipulated the Nov. 12 legal knowledge tests for the High Anti-Corruption Court. The commission denied the accusations.
Some of the test questions had more than one correct answer, High Qualification Commission member Andriy Kozlov, ex-Public Integrity Council member Vitaly Tytych and Judge Mykhailo Slobodin said. Thus the commission had an opportunity to promote some candidates by telling them which answers it deems right, according to Tytych, who participated in the competition but did not pass the tests. The commission refused to give him his test results, which he says proves they were falsified.
