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Eastern Europe
March 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 19
the West”. On the ground, NABU has hundreds of open cases on official corruption, but has yet to see a single senior government official jailed.
The agency occupies a large, quiet building formerly owned by the Industry Ministry on
the outskirts of Kyiv. There’s a lot of unused space, and it’s apparent that NABU’s budget doesn't stretch to redecorating. The only really discernable touch made by NABU’s management after taking the building over was the addition of the wooden letterbox that stands by the entrance with a sign inviting Ukrainian citizens to drop off documents proving acts of corruption by high- level officials.
Yet the agency is committed to making a change. NABU has been targeting increasingly senior of- ficials in the last year which has caused the blow back to escalate dramatically. In late 2017, the agency faced an unprecedented number of open attacks by the other law enforcement branches that culminated in an attempt to place the bureau under the direct scrutiny of parliament – some- thing antithetical to the whole idea of an inde- pendent agency as conceived by the donors. The move, Western backers complained, would have effectively killed the hard-earned independence
of the bureau. The outcry was unprecedented, with a storm of tweets and EU officials making midnight calls to the president’s office ahead of the vote the next day. Ukrainian authorities backed down and killed the offending bill.
The dust has now settled. But NABU director Artem Sytnyk has grown weary. “Right now is a decisive moment, not just for the bureau but for the entire anti-corruption cause in Ukraine,” he told bne IntelliNews in an exclusive interview at the agency’s headquarters.
His massive, but largely bare, office reflects the agency’s limbo-like status. On the walls are a few awards, as well as an agreement on cooperation with the FBI, which trains NABU's agents and has been cooperating with the agency on international matters.
Sytnyk’s number one concern is the upcoming bill on the creation of a dedicated anticorruption court (ACC).
NABU is the investigative part of a triumvirate that also includes the Special Anti-Corruption Pros- ecutor’s Office (SAPO), which carries out pros- ecutions in parallel to the General Prosecutor’s Office, but is also entirely independent from the government’s control. What is missing is a court to hear the cases investigated by NABU and pros- ecuted by SAPO that is also independent from the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian judicial system.
The courts were supposed to be reformed in
2017, but when the new system was announced Ukraine’s civil society was shocked to discover that at least 25 of the 111 judges appointed were known to be corrupt. “The judicial reform has failed,” said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and usually one of Ukraine’s most outspoken supporters.
International donors are becoming increasingly frustrated and cancelled the transfer of cash at the end of last year until the anti-corruption court was set up.
Sytnyk says the ACC would solve the bureau’s main problem: the fact that the various officials
it has investigated and arrested in the last few years have almost all been freed or received light sentences once they enter the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian justice system. In the latest case, the arrest of Odessa mayor Hennady Trukhanov, suspected of embezzlement, was short lived as he was immediately released without bail pending his trial.
“The anticorruption court is the most important reform right now,” Sytnyk says, “but its creation has been controversial.”
President Poroshenko became only a reluctant supporter of the reform in late 2017, after the IMF made it clear it was a key condition for unlocking the next bailout loan. Ukraine has so far received