HOT ANTICORRUPTION NEWS / Issue #99
April 19, 2019
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Today's issue:
- infamous Kyiv administrative court ruled Privatbank nationalization unlawful;
- Riaboshapka from Zelenskyi's team announced priority anticorruption measures;
- journalistic investigations:
Zelenskyi Kolomoiskyi is satisfied with Kholodnytskyi; - Zelenskyi's lawyer had a secret meeting with the head of the Constitutional Court;
- subject of journalistic investigation into alleged corruption in partnership with Kononenko in the energy sector extradited to Ukraine
- Lutsenko admitted there was no list of untouchables from the U.S. Ambassador
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Infamous Kyiv administrative court ruled Privatbank nationalization unlawful
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Kyiv District Administrative Court upheld Igor Kolomoiskyi's lawsuit against the National Bank of Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers regarding the unlawful nationalization of PrivatBank. The decision is not enforced yet. The National Bank informed they will file the appeal, hromadske.ua reports.
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The international community promptly reacted to this development: the World Bank, the EBRD, the EU Delegation, and the U.S. Embassy.
Earlier, the company Kroll has identified that Privatbank was subjected to a large scale and coordinated fraud over at least a ten-year period ending December 2016. This resulted in the Bank suffering a loss of at least USD 5.5 billion. More details.
OCCRP about Privanbank fraud.
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Priority anticorruption measures of
Zelenskyi's team
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On Thursday Volodymyr Zelenskyi presented his team. Anticorruption reform will be covered by Ruslan Riaboshapka, former NACP Commissioner. Riaboshapka announced that those anticorruption institutions, which do not work, will be relaunched. The judicial self-governance bodies (the High Qualification Commission of Judges and the High Council of Justice) will face the same fate.
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Journalistic investigations:
Zelenskyi Kolomoiskyi is satisfied with Kholodnytskyi
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In January, the presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyi supported the anti-corruption agenda of the number of NGOs. One of its points was the dismissal of SAPO head Nazar Kholodnytskyi and his deputies. But since that time this point is not publicly mentioned by Zelenskyi’s team. Why? See the publication by Nashi Groshi.
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Zelenskyi’s lawyer, who falls under lustration, had secret meeting with the head of the Constitutional Court
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Andriy Bogdan, the advisor and lawyer at the campaign headquarters of the candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyi, falls under the restriction of the lustration law and cannot work in the public administration.
Schemes investigative journalists report that Bogdan visited the Constitutional Court, where he allegedly met with the head of the court Stanislav Shevchuk.
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Among other issues, this court is currently making the decision regarding the fate of the Law “On the purification of the authorities” and may recognize lustration as unconstitutional,” journalists reminded. More details.
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Subject of journalistic investigation into alleged corruption in partnership with Kononenko in the energy sector extradited to Ukraine
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Kyiv district court has chosen a preventive measure for the former MP Dmytro Kryuchkov, subject of journalistic investigation for alleged corruption in the energy sector in partnership with a close ally of the President and deputy head of Poroshenko’s bloc in the Parliament Igor Kononenko. Kryuchkov is now under detention for 45 days with the alternative of 7 million UAH bail. He is suspected of causing the damage to the state in the amount exceeding 346 million UAH. He was detained in Germany on July 14, 2018, but was then released on bail. In March 2019, Germany agreed to extradite Kryuchkov.
See the full text of journalistic investigation.
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Lutsenko admitted that there was no list of untouchables from the U.S. Ambassador
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In his interview to theBabel, the Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko stated that the US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch had not given him the "list of untouchables", as he had claimed earlier in the interview for the Hill.
"The meeting took place... in the PGO in January 2017. It was not one-on-one meeting...
Mrs. Yovanovitch was interested in the case of [former deputy Prosecutor General] Vitaliy Kasko. The thing was that Mr. Kasko had registered his mother in the corporate apartment. But she had never left Lviv. There were signs of abuse of office. According to her, Kasko was an outstanding anti-corruption fighter, and the criminal proceeding discredited anti-corruption activists. I explained details and explained that I was not able to open and close proceedings voluntarily," informed Lutsenko.
"I also told about the number of anti-corruption fighters who were investigated. She said that this was unacceptable, as this allegedly would undermine the credibility of anti-corruption activists. I took the piece of paper, wrote down voiced names and said: "Give the list of untouchable persons". She said: “No, you got me the wrong way”. I said: “No, I understood you correctly..." Lutsenko said.
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We will share with you more detailed analysis, fact check and rebuttal of Lutsenko's interview later, but now would bring to your attention another interesting story, which was also a part of Lutsenko's infamous interview to the Hill - on NABU director Sytnyk.
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Lutsenko earlier claimed that: "We speak that Mr Sytnyk, NABU director, officially told about the criminal investigation with Mr Manafort and in the same time Mr Sytnyk stressed that in such a way he wanted to assist the campaign of Ms Clinton. This member of parliament even attached the audiotape where several men, one of which had a voice similar to the voice of Mr Sytnyk, discussed the matter."
In our rebuttal, we already explained why this audio recording of dubious origin cannot be used in the court.
However, it turned out that the investigators were magically lucky. They found a flash drive with the audio recording. They conducted the search in the place where Sytnyk had a vacation (a few years ago?) and where the same recorded conversation allegedly took place. This was a hunting household with small houses. The investigators were looking for the recording device, but what they found was the flash drive with the recording of the full conversation. In fact, there were three flash drives - the other two were empty. All of them were... well, lying in the closet.
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In addition, NABU also rebutted Lutsenko's accusations against them.
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