Ukraine prosecutor general announces his team, latest changes

Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s newly appointed prosecutor general, presented to the public on May 30 his latest moves in his declared campaign of reforming the body to meet Western demands. He appointed MP Dmytro Storozhuk, 30, as his first deputy, a lawyer who worked in the private sector and served as in the legal department of the People’s Front party launched by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the former prime minister. The other deputies are Yevhen Yenin, 35, who served in various intelligence bodies including the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and Valentyna Telychenko, who served as the lawyer for the family of slain journalist Georgy Gongadze. Her task is to lead new recruitment in local prosecutor offices, bring the Prosecutors Academy up to Western standards, introduce Western standards in statistics and update Ukrainian legislation, he said.

The domestic security department, which is responsible for the review of prosecutors, will be led by Petro Shkutiak, 35, a EuroMaidan activist with a law degree who voluntarily served in the Donbas war. He aims to launch an Inspection General by December 1 “that will hunt for bribe-takers and betrayers in the prosecutor general.”

Lutsenko said he aims to remove corrupt officials from local prosecutor bodies by April 1, 2017 by replacing them with lawyers who never worked as prosecutors. Lutsenko asked three deputy prosecutor generals of the old guard to resign. As for the activists they targeted, the criminal case will be closed against Anti-Corruption Action Centre Head Vitaly Shabunin while the criminal case against Vitaliy Kasko, former deputy prosecutor, will be passed to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.

Zenon Zawada: Not a bad start by Lutsenko but the public remains skeptical, given it has been burned before. Certainly, Storozhuk’s advantage is that he’s a newcomer with a legal background. Yet he has no prosecution experience and his appointment looks politically motivated, given that he is part of Yatsenyuk’s team (and his People’s Front party remains the second-largest parliamentary faction). The appointments of Telychenko and Shkutiak are wonderful from a PR standpoint, but time will tell if they’re able to serve a larger purpose than window-dressing.

What’s already apparent is that Lutsenko is taking a tempered path to reform, which is reasonable in light of the conditions he finds himself in. For example, dismissing the old guard prosecutors could have sparked an unnecessary scandal that could have embarrassed Lutsenko if he didn’t succeed. He’s setting reasonable timetables for reviews as well. Yet it remains to be seen whether his chosen path satisfies Ukraine’s Western lenders. Inspections of officials in Saakashvili’s team in Odesa last week drew raised eyebrows, yet Lutsenko claimed he didn’t know and besides that, it was all kosher. So far, he hasn’t disqualified himself and like his predecessors, he’s offered some glimmer of hope.