What should Yurii Lutsenko report on?

The work of Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko has deserved a mixed assessment so far. First of all, let us recall that to appoint Lutsenko (who lacks legal training) to the position on May 12, 2016, the government had to change legislation. essentially “bending the law to suit the man,” who had led the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (PPB)’s faction in the parliament until then.

The prosecutor general himself posted on Facebook a concise report in the form of an infographic description of his achievements: “As many as 7,006 indictments have been sent to the courts; the Yanukovych case is in court; 52 billion hryvnias have been recovered by the treasury; undue profits identified by investigative organs of the prosecution service of Ukraine in cases initiated according to Articles 368-370 (bribery) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine amount to 131 million hryvnias; land claims amounting to 8,756 million hryvnias have been satisfied.”

Lutsenko made quite a few memorable loud statements in his first year. He reports arrests of corrupt officials almost daily on the social network. Still, his lack of legal training has been evident. Lutsenko has repeatedly been criticized for the fact that he, for example, has publicly accused the former president Viktor Yanukovych, often not mincing words and thus giving a trump card to the defenders of the former president, who have accused the prosecutor general of bias.

The Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO)’s confrontation with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) is another major issue. Despite the fact that the heads of the two structures gave a few joint news conferences, it has not extinguished disputes between these bodies, in particular with regard to jurisdiction. Often enough, both agencies race to detain an official and to be the first to report it on social networks. The confrontation was so heated at times that the PGO carried out searches in the NABU office, while the Bureau accused the prosecution service of illegally holding their employees under arrest.

The Gongadze-Podolsky case has been another test for the prosecutor general. A year ago, when Lutsenko was holding a news conference, I asked him how was the investigation into the crimes’ instigators going, as Oleksii Podolsky was deprived of any standing in it. The prosecutor general promised to report on it in a month, but there has been no report for a year, and Lutsenko never mentioned this nationally important case in his many subsequent statements.

Of course, in addition to the prosecutor’s person, we should talk about the system itself. To break it, we need not only professionalism, but a great deal of effort and desire as well, because this system has absorbed not just remnants of the Soviet era, but features of Leonid Kuchma’s presidency too. The tradition of using law-enforcement agencies to win clan-oligarchic fights was established precisely under Kuchma. Unfortunately, this tradition is still relevant.

On the eve of the prosecutor general’s speech in the Verkhovna Rada, we asked our experts to assess his first year in office and express their view on what Lutsenko should speak about in the parliament on May 24.

“NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE SO FAR TO REFORM THE PROSECUTION SERVICE’S SOVIET-MODELED STRUCTURE”

Oleksandr BANCHUK, expert of the Center for Political and Legal Reforms:

“Lutsenko has done nothing so far to reform the prosecution service’s Soviet-modeled structure, which is still extant. This system is still politically dependent, and therefore it engages in selective prosecution, violates human rights during criminal investigations or fails to enforce human rights when they are violated, for example by the police. The only positive development has been the creation of a general inspectorate at the PGO, tasked with identifying violators and corrupt officials. However, as soon as the National Bureau of Investigation will be created, a considerable part of the powers of the general inspectorate will have to be eliminated, and some personnel dismissed. Therefore, this is a temporary solution, but it is presented in the media as some kind of achievement.

“The prosecutor general’s position has always been a political one, but in the present case, the additional risk comes from the fact that Ukraine is the only country in Europe in which a person without legal training has been appointed as prosecutor general. This position should be filled by a lawyer who has professional knowledge of the justice and prosecution system, and most importantly, keeps equidistant from political players. Lutsenko’s appointment violated European principles and practice regarding political independence of the prosecutor general’s position. We have also seen with the Yanukovych trial that Lutsenko, instead of recusing himself from the case because he has personal accounts to settle, has worsened things further by making a number of statements that have provided the former president’s legal defense team with an opportunity to interpret this as the prosecutor general’s biased approach to the case. Everyone knows that Yanukovych persecuted Lutsenko, and now their roles are effectively reversed. In such a situation, it would be wiser for Lutsenko to keep a low profile and refrain from personally representing the prosecution. However, he has behaved not as a lawyer but as a politician in that case too.

“History teaches our presidents nothing; otherwise they would have done everything in their power to appoint to the position of prosecutor general an independent person, who would focus on professional and unbiased work.”

“COMPENSATING PUBLIC DAMAGES HAS BEEN GOING QUITE SUCCESSFULLY”

Valerii KARPUNTSOV, MP of the PPB faction, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legislative Support of Law Enforcement:

“I have known Lutsenko since 2005. Today, I see both successes and failures in the prosecutor general’s work. His work can be assessed based on the number of criminal cases sent to court compared with the number of convictions. This figure would reflect the quality of his work. The second criterion is the actual number and amount of funds recovered by the treasury or received as compensation. On that count, Lutsenko’s work has been going quite successfully so far. I strongly approve the prosecutor general’s focus on recovering public money. Lutsenko needs to cover it all when speaking from the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada. I am sure that the prosecutor general will appeal to the parliament to expedite modernizing legislation on the prosecution service’s activities. After all, we have had an abnormal situation lately, since amendments to the Constitution regarding the justice system, including the prosecution service, were passed in June 2016, or almost a year ago, but the relevant legislation still has not been amended accordingly. This is nonsense, and both the prosecution service and the parliament are to blame for it. In addition, the parliament is of course interested to hear from him on the issue of lifting some MPs’ immunity, and I think that Lutsenko will say something about it.

“I am also wondering about the fate of the Prosecution Service Academy. It has not been licensed by the Ministry of Education and is therefore unable to teach students. The Education Act does not apply to the Prosecution Service Academy.”

“SUPERVISING THE PENAL SYSTEM IS ONE OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE PGO”

Viktor CHUMAK, independent MP:

“Unfortunately, we can assess the prosecutor general’s PR efforts for the year, but we cannot assess his actual achievements. Many actions have been announced in advance, publicized, promoted in the media as achievements of the PGO, but there is no information whatsoever about the actual steps behind them. About 1,000 bribe-takers have been detained over the year according to the PGO’s own reports, but only 20 cases have been sent to court. Let us recall the much-publicized claim that 10 billion hryvnias of public money have been recovered by the PGO over the year. This is virtual money which has not really been recovered by anyone. Recovery of Yanukovych’s 1.5 billion hryvnias is another interesting matter. The public does not know how it was done, because the court order has been classified by the PGO for unknown reasons.

“Besides, all of Lutsenko’s statements concern only investigation work. However, this is not the main function of the PGO. Its principal role is to ensure other government branches’ compliance with the law and supervise criminal investigations. We have not heard anything from the PGO on the police’s shortcomings in criminal investigations or failures of the Security Service of Ukraine or other agencies tasked with such activities. We know the pitiful state of the penal system, the supervision of which is another function of the PGO. Should Lutsenko lose control over investigations, people will lose all interest in him, and he will then have no fodder for his PR efforts. Therefore, the prosecutor general has been desperately trying to extend his office’s investigation powers so as to be able to launch an investigation and never transfer it to another agency.

“The public has been able to see over the year that Lutsenko is totally innocent of legal knowledge. Accordingly, we will have huge troubles with court decisions. When the prosecution service fails to involve the NABU when conducting proceedings against persons who are subject to the NABU’s jurisdiction alone, the trial court may eventually decide to throw out the evidence as obtained by unauthorized agencies and through improper means. Such cases will fall apart for failure to comply with the proper legal procedure. The MPs have to pose these questions to the prosecutor general on May 24, if he does not address them himself first.”

Interviewed by Valentyn TORBA, The Day