Venediktova accused of undermining criminal case against top official

Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, was
accused on Dec. 2 by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) of deliberately
undermining its criminal case against Oleh Tatarov, a deputy head of the
president’s office who is accused of bribing a police official to falsify
evidence. On Dec. 1, Venediktova reached a decision – without informing her
four prosecutors in the cases – to replace them and insert herself, a
bureaucratic maneuver that the NABU said prevented its detectives – and
specialized anti-corruption prosecutors – from meeting a deadline to conduct
investigations and issue a notice of suspicion to a key suspect, the bureau’s
press service said. “The national bureau is convinced that this situation is a
continuation of deliberate pressure on the investigation. That is, during the
last six months, the Prosecutor General’s Office has resorted to such actions not
for the first time,” the statement said.

Tatarov is alleged to be involved in a corruption
scheme involving an exchange of apartments, between the defunct construction
company UkrBud and the National Guard, at depressed prices that were determined
by the NABU to have cost the state UAH 81 mln (USD 2.9 mln). Among those
benefitting from the fraudulent exchange, Kyiv construction executive Maksym
Mykytas, agreed to cooperate with the NABU in its investigation by implicating
all those involved in not only the crime, but its cover up, including the
presidential official. “It was Tatarov who allegedly transferred the bribe to
the deputy head of the expert center of the Internal Affairs Ministry
(Kostiantyn) Dubonos, in order for experts to determine the amount of the
damage to the state from the apartment exchange to be a paltry UAH 7 mln (USD
0.25 mln),” reported Yuriy Butusov, the chief editor of the censor.net news
site.

In response to the accusation, Venediktova said she
has acted “exclusively within the framework of the law and designated
authority,” particularly in the UkrBud-National Guard case in which Tatarov is
involved. She said she replaced the prosecutors in the case and inserted
herself because it “has reached prominent status” and needs “a quick, complete,
unbiased, comprehensive and effective investigation of all the details of the
criminal case,” the office’s website reported. Her decision didn’t need
approval from anyone, the statement added. “The change in the group of
prosecutors in the criminal case does not influence the investigative actions
in the pre-trial investigations,” the statement said.

The Mykytas case is important because “for the first
time in Ukraine’s history, the effective work of anti-corruption bodies forced
a big businessman, Maksym Mykytas, accused of corruption, to strike a deal with
investigators and implicate all those whom he gave bribes to, all those who
helped him break the law,” Butusov wrote. In a Dec. 2 court hearing, Mykytas
confirmed his cooperation with investigators and was released from jail under
24-hour house arrest, the pravda.com.ua news site reported. As part of the
cooperation, he also agreed to compensate the state UAH 50 mln out of UAH 81
mln in damages, as well as transfer to the state UAH 750 mln worth of assets,
the NABU reported. Mykytas also implicated former National Guard commander
Yuriy Allerov, testifying that he offered him a bribe of USD 125 ths for the
corrupt deal.

Zenon Zawada: The Mykytas
criminal case is the latest battleground between the NABU – and its IMF-backed
director Artem Sytnyk – and Ukraine’s corrupt figures, who are typically
aligned with Russia and have found refuge in the Zelensky administration.
Although Butusov reported that Zelensky has been defending Tatarov behind the
scenes, the president has been careful to avoid taking any sides in his public
statements. Moreover, the President’s Office issued a Nov. 29 statement
distancing itself from Tatarov’s attacks on the NABU
and Sytnyk the prior day. It’s the latest example of Zelensky trying to coddle
both the West and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.

Yet what Zelensky avoids saying is demonstrated by the
actions of Venediktova, who is clearly trying to shield Tatarov, who owes his
rise in politics to Andriy Portnov, the well-connected lawyer for former
President Yanukovych who has maintained his influence with Andriy Yermak, the
president’s righthand man. Indeed, Tatarov served as the personal lawyer for
Portnov, among other pro-Russian figures in Ukraine.

This latest chapter in Ukraine’s anti-corruption
battles merely confirms our expectation that little will be accomplished under
the Zelensky administration in this critical sphere. Pro-Russian forces are
acting with impunity, managing to arrange for the Constitutional Court to issue
its scandalous Oct. 27 ruling that turned the IMF-sponsored anti-corruption
infrastructure on its head. We agree with Butusov that historic events have
occurred in Ukrainian law enforcement, particularly with the Mykytas case. But
these gains have come very slowly, with much difficulty and inconsistency.