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The same day, NABU's head Artem Sytnyk denied attempting to wiretap the prosecutor’s office. At the same time, the SAPO's chief Nazar Kholodnytsky said that Sytnyk's behaviour has nothing in common with the fight against corruption in the country.
Earlier, Sytnyk accused Kholodnytsky of alleged law violations during criminal investigations. The accusation followed weeks of wiretapping the personal office of Kholodnytskiy.
Meanwhile, NABU's head Sytnyk was under fire recently for a secret midnight visit to the president’s private home for a meeting , which was slammed by local experts as a move, which "creates enormous suspicions and casts doubts on Sytnyk’s integrity".
Both NABU and SAPO were created around three years ago at the request of Western donors and backers, which wanted independent agencies investigating crimes of corruption and prosecuting them. NABU is the investigative part of a triumvirate that also includes SAPO, which carries out the prosecutions in parallel to the General Prosecutor’s Office, but is also entirely independent from the government’s control. What is missing is an independent anti-corruption court (ACC) to hear the cases investigated by NABU and prosecuted by SAPO. A law to set up this court was passed earlier this year after enormous pressure was brought to bear by the IMF.
"Obviously, this incident further harms Ukraine’s image and credibility among Western authorities, who have been desperate in finding progress in combating corruption in Ukraine," Zenon Zawada at Kyiv-based brokerage Concorde Capital wrote in a note on September 20.
This ongoing conflict also "jeopardises" the functioning of the independent anti-corruption court, whose creation was launched in June by the president after intense pressure from Western institutions and civil organisations, Zawada believes. The adoption of the court legislation is one of a key condition for a new tranche from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) support programme.
"It’s unclear what cases the court would begin to hear if these two bodies can’t cooperate in investigating and prosecuting them," he added.
"We expect this conflict to continue until after the 2019 elections because it’s very convenient for the leading politicians to have the anti-corruption bodies fighting with each other, rather than investigating and prosecuting cases," Zawada underlined in the note. "The conflict has caused both Kholodnytskiy and Sytnyk to align themselves with politicians and even perform favors for them (allegedly), such as closing cases."
2.4 Politics - misc
An IMF mission left Ukraine on September 24 without announcing a deal
on new aid but a top central bank official said he expected an agreement "in the near future" that would help preserve financial stability during 2019, an election year. Analysts had been expecting a deal to be struck that would allow
10 UKRAINE Country Report October 2018 www.intellinews.com