It’s clearer by the day that the idea to create a parallel and separate anti-corruption infrastructure in Ukraine was a well-intentioned, but naïve mistake. It has been badly executed and allowed Ukraine’s government and powerful oligarchs (who still rule, by the way) to avoid reform of the main police, prosecutors, and courts that still wield most of the power and hog most of the resources — employing hundreds of thousands of people.
Creating an elite, independent, untouchable, incorruptible set of institutions looked good on paper in the euphoria after the EuroMaidan Revolution toppled Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, would investigate high-level corruption. The Special Anti-Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine, or SAPO, would prosecute the cases. The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption would monitor asset declarations by top officials for signs of corruption.
And, oh, as an afterthought, after realizing there’s no credible court to take these cases, the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine was established in 2019, after Petro Poroshenko obstructed its creation for most of his five-year presidency.
But it was all a trap.
These new agencies don’t have anywhere near the resources as the old, corrupt and ineffective existing institutions — the Interior Ministry (250,000+ employees), the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU (40,000+ employees), the State Bureau of Investigation (1,600+ employees), the General Prosecutor’s Office (9,000+ prosecutors) and the regular courts (7,000+ judges), with the newly constituted Supreme Court a possible exception.
NABU, the most effective of them all, has been sabotaged by limited powers, inadequate resources and turf battles. It belatedly won the right to use wiretaps as part of its investigations, but still can’t execute it because the SBU obstructs it. In the latest outrage, a parliament committee approved legislation that allows the general prosecutor to take cases away from NABU without court approval.
For years, the SAPO was led by Nazar Kholodnytsky, who is alleged to have been corrupt himself, after NABU recordings caught him coaching criminal investigation suspects in avoiding charges. Now there isn’t anybody in the role. In any case, the position remains subservient to the general prosecutor.
As for the High Anti-Corruption Court, the early signs aren’t good. The court has already made some questionable rulings, and its chairwoman was spotted attending a party thrown by Serhiy Kivalov along with some of the most notorious judges in Ukraine. In any case, the court’s effectiveness in stamping out corruption will be limited if investigators and prosecutors fail to bring cases of big corruption.
As the standoff between President Volodymyr Zelensky and the corrupt Constitutional Court shows, these justices will simply undermine the corruption fight by nullifying laws that empowered these new agencies.
The most recent embarrassment to expose the moral bankruptcy of law enforcement involved the SBU. This is the Soviet-era successor of the KGB that operates with no accountability and that seems to exist mainly to enrich its bloated workforce by extorting money from legitimate businesses. The plot involved accusations that an ex-top SBU official and a current agent conspired to assassinate a top commander under Ivan Bakanov, the SBU chief installed by Zelensky, his long-time friend. The only kernel of good news came with an initial vote by parliament on Jan. 28 to move to strip the agency of its involvement in economic activities.
It’s possible that these new anti-corruption agencies could still live up to their potential if they were truly independent and given enough resources. But then the old corrupt agencies should go out of existence. To have parallel agencies just invites the turf wars and unclear authority that we’ve seen.
We’ve seen enough. If parliament or the prosecutor general or the courts don’t sabotage these agencies, they’re sabotaged from within. And this just gives the unaccountable and ineffective old agencies more excuses to betray the public interest. Safest bet: No one of any consequence will face charges for any serious crimes by the new or old agencies soon, if ever.
