Justice Delayed & Denied

Editor’s Note: When it comes to investigating the crimes of the powerful, Ukraine’s law enforcement and justice system have proven to be impotent. No high-profile murders have been solved. And high-level corruption, which by official estimates took $40 billion out of Ukraine from 2010-2014 alone, remains unpunished. As Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said at the Yalta European Strategy conference on Sept. 17 about the failure to prosecute anyone for major crimes: “You can’t catch a big fish with a small, thin rod.”
The following are among the most high-profile and publicized cases that are languishing.

EuroMaidan murders

The investigation into the murder of more than 100 protesters during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution tops the list. The revolution prompted Viktor Yanukovych to abandon the presidency on Feb. 22, 2014. The third anniversary of the start of the revolution is on Nov. 21.

Five pro-government thugs went to jail for assaulting protesters, but no one has been jailed for the murders yet. Five Berkut riot police officers are currently on trial on charges of murdering demonstrators. However, the trial may drag on for years, lawyers say.

No cases against the suspected organizers of the murders, including Yanukovych and his allies, have yet been sent to court. But even when they are, the legal inconsistencies in the law on trial in absentia passed earlier this year may lead to any verdicts in these cases being cancelled by the European Court of Human Rights.

And there are signs that the EuroMaidan cases are being intentionally sabotaged. Important documents were destroyed by the Interior Ministry in 2014, and Berkut riot police commander Dmytro Sadovnyk fled the country after a judge made a controversial decision to release him on bail. Pavlo Dikan, a lawyer representing the slain demonstrators, doesn’t believe that the judge could have made such a ruling without the approval of the high authorities.

Yanukovych era

Not a single corruption case against Yanukovych and his allies has been sent to court so far. Current government officials estimate that as much as $40 billion was stolen during Yanukovych’s kleptocratic rule from 2010-2014, but very little has been recovered.

Yanukovych alone faces charges in several cases, including the theft of Hr 220 million ($8.8 million) allocated to telecommunications firm Ukrtelecom.

But some allies of the fugitive ex-president have escaped having any criminal charges filed against them at all.

One of them is lawmaker Yuriy Boiko. While the Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating a 2011 deal in which the Energy Ministry under Boiko’s control allegedly embezzled $400 million, Boiko himself isn’t even a formal suspect.

According to reformist lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko, last year investigators had drafted a notice of suspicion for Boiko, but then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Shokin blocked it. Shokin’s successor Yuriy Lutsenko has also failed to make Boiko a suspect.

Another Yanukovych associate, exiled billionaire oligarch Dmytro Firtash, has been accused by ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and others of siphoning massive amounts of the nation’s wealth through gas-trading schemes. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations has charged him with bribery, but there is not a single notice of suspicion against him in Ukraine.

Nor is there a notice of suspicion against Serhiy Lyovochkin, Yanukovych’s former chief of staff, despite numerous graft accusations against him and the fact that his lavish lifestyle doesn’t match his income as a life-long civil servant.

There are also no formal charges in the investigation against Constitutional Court judges accused of helping Yanukovych usurp power.

Many others have fled from justice. Lawmaker Serhiy Klyuyev fled the country in 2015 after the Prosecutor General’s Office asked parliament to strip him of immunity in an embezzlement case, but failed to present sufficient grounds for arresting Klyuyev – despite there being a mass of evidence against him.

Another ex-Yanukovych ally, Kharkiv Mayor Gennady Kernes, has been charged with kidnapping, torturing and threatening to murder EuroMaidan activists. The case against him was sent to court in March 2015. However, Kernes is not even under arrest, and the trial has seen almost no progress.

Earlier this month the Prosecutor General’s Office searched Kernes’ offices as part of an investigation into the theft of land worth Hr 4 billion.

“The Yanukovych-era cases have obviously been botched by investigators over the past two-and-a-half years,” said Vitaly Shabunin, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board. “Such obvious evidence could not have been killed by accident, and this could not have been done without the president’s approval.”

The Prosecutor General’s Office has denied accusations of sabotage, while President Petro Poroshenko’s spokesman Sviatoslav Tsegolko did not reply to a request for comment.

Poroshenko Bloc

So far, no notices of suspicion have been filed against any major allies of current President Petro Poroshenko. The president’s gray cardinals, lawmakers Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky, have been accused of bleeding state companies dry, which they deny.

In February then-Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius said Kononenko had been trying to install his protégés at state firms to profiteer from them, and to impose his loyalist Andriy Pasishnik as a deputy economy minister. The case against Pasishnik was sent by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau to court in April.

Another investigation by the anti-graft bureau concerns an alleged corruption scheme at the Odesa Portside Plant in which an associate of Hranovsky is implicated.

People’s Front

Investigators have also failed to bring formal charges against any major representative of the People’s Front party, or send any cases to trial.

People’s Front heavyweight and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has been investigated by the anti-graft bureau in several corruption cases.

Ex-People’s Front lawmaker Mykola Martynenko is under investigation on suspicion of accepting a 30 million Swiss franc ($30.9 million) bribe and alleged involvement in corruption schemes at the Odesa Portside Plant and nuclear power firm Energoatom.

Journalists’ murders

More than 50 Ukrainian journalists have been killed or have died under suspicious circumstances since 1991.

Georgy Gongadze, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper, was killed in 2000. Ex-police official Oleksiy Pukach was sentenced to life in prison for the murder in 2013.

But others implicated in the crime, including former President Leonid Kuchma, have never gone on trial.

Another high-profile murder is that of Ukrainian-Belarusian journalist Pavlo Sheremet, killed by a car bomb on July 20. More than two months later, no progress has been reported in the investigation.

Prosecutors’ corruption

One big reason for the lack of rule of law and injustice in Ukrainian society is the Prosecutor General’s Office itself. It doesn’t operate like prosecutors in the West – who are only one part of a legal system that includes independent judges, police investigators and defense attorneys.
Instead, Ukrainian prosecutors have power over the entire legal system – including judges, accounting for the astounding 99 percent Soviet-style conviction rate of cases that go to trial.

They have proven unaccountable to anyone, although the top prosecutor is appointed by the president and approved by parliament.

Many lawyers and others familiar with Ukraine’s broken criminal justice system call the Prosecutor General’s Office “the biggest mafia” in the nation. It is widely alleged – and denied as well – that prosecutors have protected a corrupt oligarchy for all of Ukraine’s 25 years of independence. Ex-Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko, forced out by obstructionists in the service, said taking bribes “was normal practice” during the eras of the four most recent prosecutor generals, namely Viktor Pshonka, Oleh Makhnitsky, Vitaliy Yarema and Viktor Shokin.

Pshonka, who has been charged with involvement in the EuroMaidan murders and corruption, is a fugitive from justice and was last seen in Ukraine barreling through a security checkpoint on his way to Russia.

A high-profile bribery case against top prosecutors Oleksandr Korniyets and Volodymyr Shapakin was blocked and sabotaged by Shokin and his deputies Yuriy Stolyarchuk and Yuriy Sevruk, critics say. The case was sent to court in January but the sabotage may continue.

Meanwhile, graft accusations against Shokin and ex-deputy prosecutor generals Anatoly Danylenko and Volodymyr Huzyr have not been investigated.

Ilovaisk massacre

There has been little progress in the investigation into the massacre of hundreds of Ukrainian troops by the Russian army during the battle of Ilovaisk in August 2014. Several Russian generals were charged with aggression against Ukraine in 2015 in absentia, but no notices of suspicion have been filed so far against Ukrainian generals, whom many accuse of ordering the soldiers to go into the corridor of Russian troops, where they were massacred.

Viktor Muzhenko, who is still the Ukrainian military’s chief of staff, and ex-Defense Minister Valery Heletei have been accused of negligence, incompetence and treason that allegedly led to the Ilovaisk tragedy, although they deny the accusations. In March, prosecutor Vitaly Opanasenko, who was preparing a notice of suspicion against Muzhenko and was also investigating graft cases against prosecutors, was fired as part of Shokin’s crackdown on reformers.

Voting fraud

Voting fraud remains unpunished. Oleksiy Koshel, head of the Committee of Ukrainian Voters, told the Kyiv Post that he did not know of any official being jailed for rigging elections since 1991.

Investigations into vote rigging during the 2004 presidential election, which led to the pro-Western Orange Revolution and brought President Viktor Yushchenko to power, did not yield any results. This is despite the Supreme Court ruling at the time that the Central Election Commission, then headed by Serhiy Kivalov, had committed numerous violations of the law.

During the 2004 election campaign, Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin. But no one has been convicted for the crime so far.

Meanwhile, the Party of Regions’ alleged off-the-book ledgers show that the commission, including its current Chairman Mykhailo Okhendovsky, received millions of dollars from the party in 2009 to 2012 – supposedly for its loyalty to Yanukovych during elections.
Kivalov and Okhendovsky deny the accusations.

The authority of Okhendovsky and other commission members expired in 2014 but Poroshenko has so far failed to replace them.

Bank fraud

No one has been convicted so far in any case of bank fraud – cases that have caused losses of at least $11.4 billion since 2008.

The banking system has historically been a major vehicle of corruption, with politicians using their own pocket banks for embezzlement, money laundering and other shady schemes.

Offshore schemes

The offshore dealings of Poroshenko and his associates have not been investigated either.

In April, a massive leak of documents from the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca consulting firm revealed that Poroshenko owns an undeclared offshore firm in the British Virgin Islands.

The revelations triggered speculation over whether the firm had been set up to evade taxes.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a Kyiv Post partner, and Hromadske television also reported in May that Poroshenko could have illegally transferred 3.9 million euros ($4.4 million) in cash and shares to Cyprus.

Poroshenko has denied doing anything illegal.

The Prosecutor General’s Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau have refused to investigate the schemes, while the ongoing investigation by the State Fiscal Service, headed by a Poroshenko loyalist, has not yielded any results so far.

Meanwhile, Poroshenko’s former chief of staff Borys Lozhkin failed to declare the sale of his UMH media group by a British Virgin Islands firm to oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko in 2013, and it is not clear if he paid taxes on the sale in Ukraine. The deal remains uninvestigated.

According to an OCCRP investigation released in June, Odesa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov owns a network of undeclared offshore companies. Some of the companies linked to Trukhanov own construction firms in Odesa that invariably get most major contracts from the city government.

Trukhanov and Lozhkin deny any wrongdoing.