Ukraine parliament to vote on Novinsky immunity on Thursday

Ukraine’s parliament will vote on Thursday, Dec. 8 on whether to remove the political immunity of MP Vadim Novinsky in order to face possible criminal charges, Speaker Andriy Parubiy said on Dec. 6 after the rules committee determined sufficient evidence was lacking in order to prosecute. The Prosecutor General’s Office submitted a request in early November to remove immunity in order to declare Novinsky, among Ukraine’s biggest oligarchs, a suspect in conspiring to usurp church authority and conspiring in the unlawful captivity of a church official during events in 2013. A vote on filing criminal charges would follow the naming of Novinsky as a suspect, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told the media on Dec. 6.

Following the parliamentary rules committee’s decision in his favor, Novinsky said the criminal charges against him are political persecution and a corporate raid on his assets. He compared the Prosecutor General to the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and said he wouldn’t leave the country ahead of Thursday’s vote, even though he has business to attend abroad. Novinsky is a partner in the Smart Holding that includes metallurgical, agricultural, natural gas prodcution and food processing companies. He is also a minority shareholder in Metinvest, Ukraine’s largest steel-producing enterprise.

Zenon Zawada: Novinsky won’t leave the country because the prosecutor general has yet to call a vote for his arrest, as was the case with mid-level businessman Oleksandr Onyshchenko when his immunity was removed in early July. Onyshchenko fled the country before the vote and is now making criminal allegations against the Ukrainian president and other top officials while living in exile in London.

Given that no call for his arrest has been made, it leads us to believe that the President Poroshenko is using this case to pressure Novinsky to offer some concessions. If it’s proven that such concessions are in the form of business assets, as alleged by Novinsky, then that would severely deteriorate Poroshenko’s reputation in the West, which is already suffering owing to Onyshchenko’s claims.

After all, it was the Yanukovych administration that developed a notorious reputation for raiding corporate assets as part of a brazen kleptocratic regime. Poroshenko engaging in the same activity would confirm reports that limited progress has been achieved following the bloody EuroMaidan protest and war with Russia.