Recently, there are increasingly rumors that the current head of the Prosecutor General's Office, Andrii Kostin, may be replaced by the current head of the Odesa Military Administration, Oleg Kiper, who has worked in the prosecutor's office at all levels for a long time.
Objectively, historically, in Ukraine, the general prosecutors do not stay in their positions for a long time - two or three general prosecutors usually change during one presidential term. The current Prosecutor General is the third during the presidency of Volodymyr Zelensky, after Ruslan Ryaboshapka (held the post for exactly one year) and Iryna Venediktova (two years).
It was expected that under the leadership of Andriy Kostin, several high-profile and socially significant cases would receive new turns in the investigation, but this did not happen. Kostin's supporters point out that during the war, not until the completion of civil cases, all forces should be thrown into the investigation of thousands of war crimes committed by Russia. Opponents, on the contrary, point out that the war was only an excuse not to investigate high-profile cases - and under a completely reinforced concrete pretext.
Therefore, we will list several well-known cases that are passed from prosecutor to prosecutor like a baton, without any hope of their quick conclusion.
The case of Tatarov
At the beginning of December 2020, NABU and SAP tried to inform about the suspicion to the deputy head of the Office of the President Oleg Tatarov - a person, given his position, close to Andriy Yermak and Volodymyr Zelenskyi. He is suspected of paying a bribe to a forensic expert for falsifying an expert opinion - this is a ten-year-old case, when the current high-ranking official worked at the Ukrbud company. As a result of this scheme, the developers took possession of the property of the National Guard in the amount of 81 million hryvnias.
On the day when the prosecutors were to hand over the suspicion, the then Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova changed the procedural heads of the case without warning, which delayed the notification of the suspicion for more than two weeks. Because of this, NABU detectives and SAP prosecutors were unable to detain Tatarov.
After that, NABU even made a special statement that it considers this situation to be "a deliberate pressure on the investigation" and claimed that the Office of the Prosecutor General has resorted to such actions not for the first time.
Later, the Prosecutor General's Office transferred Tatarov's case from NABU to the SBU, and, according to many experts, this step saved Tatarov from criminal liability. After all, NABU is the most independent body of pre-trial investigation, and the SBU at that time was headed by Zelenskyi's close friend Bakanov, which soon did not find the nature of the crime in the case.
At the end of 2021, information appeared in the mass media that the proceedings had been opened, but judging by the official response of the Prosecutor General's Office to ElitExpert — "in the criminal proceedings in the so-called case of the company "Ukrbud" on April 21.04.2022, XNUMX, a decision was made to close it«.
"Rotterdam+" case
Three years ago, NABU notified six persons of suspicion in the case of artificially inflating the price of coal and electricity according to the "Rotterdam+" formula.
We will remind that in 2016 a special formula was introduced for calculating the electricity tariff — it provided conditions for an artificial increase in the price of electricity. According to the investigation, such actions caused damage to the state by almost 19 billion hryvnias only in the first two years of the scheme's application, and by almost 40 billion hryvnias during the entire period of its operation.
The investigation established that the scheme was invented by the top managers of DTEK and NKREKU. The investigation progressed successfully, high-profile "landings" were announced, there was enough evidence to send the case to court, but SAP prosecutor Vitaliy Ponomarenko closed the case twice due to the alleged lack of evidence of damages.
In the wake of public indignation, both the Verkhovna Rada and NABU demanded the Office of the Prosecutor General to intervene and change the prosecutor of the SAP, as only this body has the relevant powers. However, the Prosecutor General's Office also twice refused to do so — despite merciless criticism of itself. As a result, the inactivity of the Office benefits primarily the main beneficiary of the "Rotterdam+" formula - oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.
The "Rotterdam+" case has moved from a dead point only now — after many years of oblivion, thanks not to the General Prosecutor's Office, but to the independent SAP and NABU. For example, on October 3, at the request of the SAP prosecutor, the High Anti-Corruption Court finally seized the property of the defendants in the case — almost 7 years later! In recent weeks, investigative bodies have become noticeably more active.
Maidan affairs
It seems strange, but even after 9 years, the investigation of the shooting of the Heavenly Hundred and the main Euromaidan cases, which include kidnapping, violation of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, illegal court decisions committed during the Revolution of Dignity, etc., has not been completed.
Bringing the investigation of crimes against the Maidan to an end was a "matter of honor" for each of the Prosecutor Generals who replaced each other. But each time these efforts ended in nothing.
At the end of 2021, the Prosecutor General's Office cheerfully reported that the investigation into these proceedings had "significantly intensified." Suspicions were raised against another 42 persons, among them 24 employees of internal affairs bodies, three prosecutors, five judges, etc. At the same time, such a number of suspicions was due to the efforts of the past years and the gradual accumulation of the evidence base, so it is inappropriate to take it as a merit.
However, even after such successful reports, only a few of the hundreds of "Maidan cases" received verdicts. And the cases regarding the officials of Yanukovych's time do not progress at all by a centimeter.
In general, according to the results of the pre-trial investigation in these cases, 397 people were brought to criminal responsibility, but only 40 people were convicted by the courts, while only 34 people's court decisions became legally binding!
And only on October 4, 2023, almost ten years later, the biggest event of the Maidan was completed. The biggest, but only one of many. Office of the Prosecutor General finally sent the indictment to the court against the former president Viktor Yanukovych and 9 ex-officials.
And in fact, this is a very revealing situation - if the Prosecutor General's Office "investigated" the Maidan cases for nine and a half years - cases of primary importance for the state, but brought only one to an end, then what can be said about lesser-known high-profile cases?
The case of Vadym Chorny
It often happens that the Prosecutor General's Office completely sabotages the investigation, as happened, in particular, with the high-profile case about the inheritance of Odesa businessman Vadym Chorny.
For two years now, the law enforcement and judicial system has prevented the investigation of the case related to the theft of corporate rights of Basari LLC and Kompromis SE, which belong to the public organization "Center for the Protection of the Disabled". First of all, we are talking about two Odesa business centers: BC "Kyivskyi" and underground BC "Gretskyi".
The criminal proceedings are being investigated by the Main Investigative Department of the National Police of Ukraine under the procedural guidance of prosecutors of the Prosecutor General's Office. The investigation has not yet identified the organizers of the crime and is not doing anything to find out their identities.
It is the affected party who is under unreasonable pressure, the property of the organization "Center for the Protection of the Disabled" has become a hostage to the situation, the Order of the Ministry of Justice, which canceled the illegal actions of the state registrars, is ignored and its action is blocked.
At the moment, the Commercial Court of Kyiv is considering case No. 910/6601/23 based on the claim of the NGO "Center for the Protection of the Disabled" against the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, the National Police of Ukraine, the Office of the General Prosecutor, the General Prosecutor's Office in Odesa Oblast, the Odesa Oblast Prosecutor's Office on the recognition of illegal inaction and the adoption of illegal decisions by law enforcement agencies in criminal proceedings, where the NGO "Center for the Protection of the Disabled" as a victim suffered losses in the total amount of UAH 139 million, caused as a result of the commission of criminal acts.
The prosecutor of the Prosecutor General's Office, Serhii Pylypenko, is leading the investigation. It should be noted that on September 22, the ElitExpert editorial office sent several official requests to the Prosecutor General's Office with a request to express its position on these issues. The response to ElitExpert only said that in the case of theft of corporate rights "the pre-trial investigation in the specified criminal proceedings is ongoing" without any details.
Thus, it can be stated that the long-awaited "prosecutor reform" of 2019-2020, if not completely unsuccessful, at least did not improve the indicators of bringing high-profile cases to the end.
Perhaps the controversial decision of the Prosecutor General's Office on the attestation of employees also contributed to this. Since April 2020, international partners and the public have been removed from the commission that certifies prosecutors. Currently, the body consists of four prosecutors and two representatives of universities, despite the fact that earlier it included three prosecutors and three experts delegated by international organizations, public figures and diplomatic missions. Such an innovation clearly undermined the trust in appointments in the Prosecutor General's Office and inevitably led to clannishness, because now, as before, prosecutors elect prosecutors, excluding "foreigners" from this procedure.
Olena Ovchinnikova, Oleksandr Dobronravov
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