Page 7 - UKRRptOct20
P. 7
2.2 Ukraine partners worried about lack of progress on judicial reform
Ukraine’s partners are worried about the deteriorating commitment of the Zelenskiy administration to the rule of law, judicial reform and the increasing politically motivated actions of his recently appointed General Prosecutor Iryna Venedyktova.
Venedyktova was a controversial hire and replaced the widely respected
Ruslan Riaboshapka as , who was dubbed “Ukraine’s first ever honest general prosecutor.” Venedyktova is widely seen as loyal to Zelenskiy and amongst her first moves was to launch an abuse of office investigation into former president Petro Poroshenko that is widely seen as politically motivated.
“Zelenskiy’s hand-picked prosecutor general Iryna Venedyktova discredits herself completely. She has now opened 39 cases against Poroshenko because Zelenskiy hates him rather than going after Ukraine's real criminals. Ukraine needs the rule of law!” tweeted Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had to defend himself in court on July 1 against abuse of office charges that nearly saw him jailed. The ex-president failed to show up at the State Bureau of Investigations and walked out of court after the charges were dropped.
Likewise, battle for control of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has recently broken out with the Constitutional Court declared illegal a 2015 presidential decree appointing Artem Sytnyk as the first director of NABU, a body set up to investigate corruption and entirely autonomous of the government. The legal assult on NABU was enough to promote the IMF to
7 UKRAINE Country Report October 2020 www.intellinews.com
