Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces has collected 36 signatures of lawmakers to initiate the process of President Petro Poroshenko’s impeachment, Yuriy Derevyanko, a lawmaker from the party, said at a news briefing on May 15.
These are mostly lawmakers from the Samopomich Party and the Radical Party, David Sakvarelidze, another top official of the Movement of New Forces, told the Kyiv Post.
The move follows numerous corruption accusations against Poroshenko, which he denies. Hromadske Television’s Slidstvo.info investigative show on May 10 published alleged Whatsapp correspondence between fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko and allies of Poroshenko on buying votes in the Verkhovna Rada, corrupt deals at state companies and other corruption schemes.
At the same time, lawmakers on May 15 started collecting signatures to initiate the dismissal of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
Impeachment
Ukraine’s Constitution stipulates that the president can be impeached, but there is no separate law governing the procedure.
In November, Derevyanko submitted a bill regulating the procedure of impeachment, but it has not been considered by parliament.
Olha Halabala, a top official of the Movement of New Forces, said in April that the party had received an official explanation from the Verkhovna Rada that a separate law on impeachment is not necessary to oust a president, and the collection of the signatures of at least 226 lawmakers is needed to initiate impeachment. The party said it had initiated such collection of signatures to impeach Poroshenko.
The process started in connection with in an alleged recording of a conversation on a corrupt deal between Poroshenko and ex-Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky published by fugitive lawmaker Olekandr Onyshchenko, and other corruption accusations against the president. Poroshenko denies the accusations.
Apart from the Zlochevsky recording, other grounds for impeachment include investigations by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a Kyiv Post partner, into Poroshenko’s foreign offshore firms and possible tax evasion, Derevyanko said in April. Poroshenko denies the accusations.
Derevyanko also said a criminal case on the Rotterdam+ coal pricing formula was one of the grounds for impeachment. The formula, which has allowed tycoon Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK energy group to benefit from high coal and power prices, was introduced in 2016 by the energy regulator headed by Dmytro Vovk, a presidential protégé.
Another justification for impeachment is an embezzlement case involving Kyiv’s Rybalsky Kuznya shipyard, which is owned by Poroshenko and his top ally and lawmaker Igor Kononenko, according to Derevyanko.
Moreover, Poroshenko owns the Lipetsk confectionary in Russia, which until 2017 paid taxes to the Russian budget – taxes that were used to finance the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine, Derveyanko said. He also mentioned media reports on Poroshenko’s alleged undeclared grain and starch businesses in Russia.
Derevyanko also referred to Poroshenko’s allegedly illegal acquisition of land plots in Kyiv’s high-end Tsarskoye Selo district and in Kyiv’s suburb of Kozyn, as well as the use of $1.5 billion confiscated from tycoon Serhiy Kurchenko’s firms to fund agricultural subsidies for Poroshenko allies Yuriy Kosiuk and Oleh Bakhmatiuk.
Derevyanko also said the Verkhovna Rada should investigate Onyshchenko’s claim that he gave a $6 million bribe to support Poroshenko in the 2014 parliamentary election, and as a result, Central Election Commission Chief Mykhailo Okhendovsky had cleared his candidacy to become a member of parliament – despite his violation of residency rules.
Parliament should also investigate Poroshenko’s alleged joint businesses with tycoon Kostyantyn Grigorishin, Derevyanko said. In one of the Onyshchenko recordings, ex-People’s Front lawmaker Mykola Martynenko said that Poroshenko and Grigorishin had “decided to divvy up the entire energy industry.”
Poroshenko denies all accusations of corruption and wrongdoing.
Saakashvili, a vehement critic of Poroshenko, was deported from Ukraine to Poland by Border Guards without a court warrant on Feb. 12. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.
Thousands have attended six major rallies for Poroshenko’s impeachment and resignation since December as part of a movement co-organized by Saakashvili. The biggest rally, numbering about 20,000, took place on Dec. 10.
Lutsenko’s dismissal
Meanwhile, 45 lawmakers have signed a motion with the Constitutional Court to cancel Lutsenko’s appointment as prosecutor general in May 2016, lawmaker Viktor Chumak said on May 15.
Critics say that major procedural violations during Lutsenko’s appointment make it illegitimate. The violations include submitting the bill abolishing the law degree requirement for voting several times during the same session, and rejecting alternative bills on prosecutorial reform, Lena Sotnyk, a lawmaker from Samopomich, said then.
Poroshenko was so keen to appoint his protégé Lutsenko, who has no law degree, that a special law abolishing the legal education requirement for the prosecutor general was passed with unprecedented speed.
Lutsenko’s opponents say that in most countries appointing a prosecutor general without a law degree would be unthinkable. Despite having no law degree, Lutsenko has to take actions that require a legal education – such as filing notices of suspicion or representing the state in court.
Onyshchenko told the Kyiv Post in 2016 that votes for Lutsenko’s appointment had been bought for $2 million. He claimed to be an intermediary in vote buying, and the vote on Lutsenko’s appointment is mentioned in his alleged Whatsapp correspondence.
