Ukraine prosecutors pursue current corruption, fail on past crimes

Only ten days remain for Ukrainian state prosecutors to place under arrest the Constitutional Court judges who amended the Constitution in 2010 to give excessive authority to former President Viktor Yanukovych, reported Self-Reliance MP Yegor Soboliev on his Facebook page. A new law on the judiciary – approved by parliament in June – takes effect on Sept. 30, making it impossible to detain or arrest a Constitutional Court judge without the agreement of the same Constitutional Court, Soboliev reported. Meanwhile, the judges behind the illegal ruling remain in their posts, he said. The Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal investigation of the 2010 ruling after Yanukovych’s flight, but a suspect has yet to be named.

The Prosecutor General and Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) exposed a judge on the Higher Justice Council of Ukraine in demanding a bribe of USD 500,000 in exchange for a judicial ruling, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said on Sept. 21. The judge in question has been called in the prosecutor general for questioning, he said. Also a Justice Ministry official was detained as part of this bribery attempt, having accepted USD 150,000, he said. In response to the report, the Higher Justice Council called upon its judge, Pavlo Hrechkivskiy, to go on leave until the investigation is concluded.

Zenon Zawada: The pursuit of justice, and anti-corruption efforts, continue to be patchy and unsystemic, as yesterday’s news confirms. The Prosecutor General deserves to be lauded for trying to weed out current corrupt officials, but the entire justice system is plagued by public distrust for failing to prosecute or convict any top officials in the Yanukovych administration for any serious crimes.

At this point, it’s highly unlikely that any high-ranking official from the Yanukovych era will be prosecuted, which seems to be the unwritten policy adopted by the president. From a pragmatic point of view, to satisfy Western observers, Ukrainian law enforcement should at least intensify its efforts to address the crimes of current officials, which is occurring rather slowly.