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Bloomberg
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy faced months of US pressure to drum up a very particular corruption investigation. Zelenskiy repeatedly responded vaguely, to the clear frustration of President Donald Trump’s circle, that he is committed to investigating corruption.
Zelenskiy’s efforts to retool his country’s law enforcement are now taking form, with Ukrainians watching whether the latest anti-corruption drive will fare better than the largely failed efforts over three decades. From Trump’s vantage point, the moves may reinvigorate a line of investigation he’s dearly sought, touching on Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma — while also spurring a look into areas he might prefer left unexplored.
“The prosecutor general’s office has been plagued by
corruption, incompetence and bureaucracy,†Vitaly Kasko, who was appointed first deputy prosecutor general in September, said in an interview. The changes are designed to tackle deep rooted corruption within Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies, he said.
As part of Zelenskiy’s plan to restore public confidence in law enforcement, Kasko and his colleagues are dismissing prosecutors, reorganising investigatory bodies and reassigning cases. Prosecutors must reapply for their jobs, and overall staffing for the central prosecutor general’s office may be cut in half from the 2,200 people it employed in August.
As it loses people, the office is also losing authority. Most of
the open corruption cases against former officials, including probes into some $40 billion allegedly looted from Ukraine by officials under former president Viktor Yanukovych, are being transferred to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, an independent body set up in 2015.
The moves could spur a fresh look into the owner of Burisma, the gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter sat on the board.
It could also revive cases linked to Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. The latter probe could reveal new details of his financial dealings with Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in 2014.
Ukrainian Claims
Claims about Ukrainian corruption are at the heart of the House impeachment inquiry into Trump. Democrats have alleged that Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine’s new president unless he publicly announced that his government was reopening a probe into Biden and his son’s involvement with Burisma, as well as over unfounded accusations that Ukraine meddled in the 2016
US election.
After Zelenskiy took office in May, his government inherited a political system where graft and bribes were endemic, and a legal apparatus overseen by a series of prosecutors general accused of corruption. Politically motivated prosecutions raised international alarms.