It has recently become clear that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky loves kleptocracy as much as his predecessor Petro Poroshenko.
Zelensky has consistently protected corrupt officials from prosecution and killed anti-corruption reforms. Now he and his inner circle have destroyed two of Ukraine’s most high-profile graft cases – against Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleg Tatarov and Ukraine’s most corrupt judge Pavlo Vovk.
Now it has also become obvious that Zelensky is as much of an authoritarian ruler as Poroshenko and is using extrajudicial tools to crack down on critics and redistribute assets.
As the West is trying to help Ukraine amid a new escalation of Russia’s aggression, Zelensky is making the country sink even lower by protecting the corrupt and lawless status quo.
Tatarov case
Specifically, Zelensky and his allies have destroyed the corruption case against the president’s deputy chief of staff Tatarov.
Zelensky blatantly violated the law by appointing Tatarov in the first place. Tatarov, who was a top police official under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, has no legal right to hold any state jobs under the 2014 lustration law on the dismissal of Yanukovych-era officials.
Tatarov has also been investigated for unlawfully persecuting protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution, which overthrew Yanukovych in 2014. He has defended Yanukovych’s ex-deputy chief of staff Andrey Portnov and pro-Russian lawmaker Vadim Novinsky as a lawyer.
This means that, while Zelensky is paying lip service to the EuroMaidan and imitates fighting Russian aggression, he is appointing Yanukovych cronies and pro-Russian officials to key state jobs.
In December, Tatarov was charged with bribing a forensic expert when he was a lawyer at state firm Ukrbud. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) published WhatsApp correspondence that confirmed the fact of the bribe.
Ex-Ukrbud CEO Maxim Mykytas, a suspect in a theft case, has also testified that Tatarov gave a $600,000 bribe to employees of the High Anti-Corruption Court in 2019 for releasing Mykytas on a miniscule bail, according to law enforcement sources. Additionally, Mykytas has testified that he had allegedly given a bribe through Tatarov to judges of Kyiv’s Solomyansky Court, the sources said.
Zelensky’s puppet prosecutor general, Irina Venediktova, has done everything to destroy the case.
She and her deputies blocked the charges in December 2020 by replacing the group of prosecutors in the Tatarov case twice and then transferred the case from the NABU to the politically subservient Security Service of Ukraine. Later in the same month, Venediktova’s prosecutors refused to arrest Tatarov and cast doubt on the charges.
In February, a corrupt court refused to extend the Tatarov investigation, and Zelensky’s loyal prosecutors killed it by missing the deadline for sending it to trial.
Vovk’s corruption
Zelensky has also completely destroyed the corruption case against judge Vovk. The reason is that Vovk has pledged allegiance to Zelensky and has been at his beck and call.
Online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported in March that in the summer of 2019 Vovk met Zelensky’s ex-chief of staff Andrei Bohdan and Ruslan Riaboshapka, who later became prosecutor general.
A law enforcement source told Ukrainska Pravda that Vovk had met Zelensky in 2019 and persuaded him that he would work as part of the president’s team. In audio recordings published by the NABU, Vovk discusses numerous corrupt deals, gives illegal orders and quips that no one should doubt the court’s “political prostitution.”
Vovk was charged in 2019 in an obstruction of justice case. But a corrupt court protected Vovk by refusing to extend the investigation, and prosecutors loyal to Zelensky missed the deadline for sending it to trial. As a result, the case died. Exactly the same thing happened with the second Vovk case.
In July 2020, Vovk was charged in a new corruption and organized crime case. For months, Vovk has ignored the summonses that NABU sent him and hid from the bureau when it tried to bring him to court. The bureau asked Zelensky’s prosecutor general Venediktova to authorize an arrest warrant for Vovk for months but she refused. Prosecutors were also pressured by Venediktova for going after Vovk, and one of them was fired for that.
In March, a judge of the High Anti-Corruption Court refused to extend the investigation after being pressured and reprimanded by the corrupt High Council of Justice. As a result, Zelensky’s prosecutors did not send it to trial by the deadline, and this case was also buried.
On April 6, the NABU also arrested Vovk’s brother and charged him with receiving a $100,000 bribe as an intermediary for Vovk. The bureau also found a $5 million treasure vault belonging to Vovk.
After years of public and Western pressure, Zelensky on April 13 submitted a bill to liquidate Vovk’s court. But Zelensky’s representative Fedir Venislavsky said that Vovk and other judges of his court may just be transferred to another court.
One thing is clear: Vovk will remain unpunished for his corruption because he is a member of Zelensky’s team.
Chaus’ kidnapping
Another prominent judge, Mykola Chaus, was caught receiving a $150,000 bribe in 2016. Allies of ex-President Petro Poroshenko, who controlled Chaus as a puppet judge, helped him flee to Moldova, according to the NABU. But before his expected extradition to Ukraine, Chaus was kidnapped in Moldova on April 3 and disappeared.
Chaus’ alleged kidnappers are linked to Ukraine’s military intelligence, according to Moldovan investigation materials cited by Ukraine’s Slidstvo.info journalism project and Moldova’s RISE Moldova site.
Moldova’s NewsMaker site reported on April 13 that Moldovan authorities had applied for lifting immunity from a Ukrainian diplomat allegedly implicated in the kidnapping.
Why would Ukrainian authorities kidnap Chaus? It could be an effort to help Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Andrey Smirnov, who is implicated in the Chaus case, escape justice. Smirnov, who was then a lawyer, also helped Chaus flee to Moldova in 2016, according to the NABU.
He denies the accusations.
Sabotaging reforms
Vovk’s impunity is a direct result of Zelensky’s stubborn refusal for two years to deliver on his election promise to carry out judicial reform.
The judiciary’s main governing body, the High Council of Justice, is a corrupt gang whose members are implicated in Vovk’s graft schemes, according to audiotapes released by the NABU. The council has protected Vovk and refused to suspend him twice. Ukraine’s civil society and Western partners have called on the authorities to oust corrupt members of the council and replace them with people of integrity. Zelensky refused.
In February, Zelensky submitted a bill to imitate pseudo-reform of the High Council of Justice. The bill changes nothing since it fails to give foreign experts a decisive role in the reform and gives a carte blanche to Ukraine’s kleptocrats.
Zelensky’s loyal Cabinet also tried in February to help Vovk and Tatarov by submitting a bill to fire NABU chief Artem Sytnyk before his term expires in 2022. The bill aims to destroy the NABU’s independence and protect Zelensky’s corrupt cronies.
The effort to remove Sytnyk was Zelensky’s reaction to the NABU’s Tatarov case and its investigation into embezzlement during the government’s COVID-19 vaccine purchases, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Due to Zelensky’s efforts to kill both the NABU and judicial reform, in February the International Monetary Fund suspended talks on a $700 million tranche for Ukraine.
Zelensky’s allies made it even worse by profanely telling off the IMF.
Timofey Mylovanov, a top aide to Zelensky’s chief of staff, hurled expletives at the International Monetary Fund, accusing it of obstructing negotiations with Ukraine.
Mylovanov openly admitted that the Ukrainian authorities had failed to reach a deal because they did not want to give foreigners a major role in judicial reform. This means that the Ukrainian government is obstinately trying to protect its bloated kleptocracy and prevent any meaningful reform.
Authoritarian tendency
As Zelensky is protecting Ukraine’s corrupt status quo, he is also transforming the National Defense and Security Council into an authoritarian tool. Instead of lawful prosecution with due process, he is imposing extrajudicial sanctions on Ukrainian citizens through the council.
Even though some of these citizens may be criminals, this is utter lawlessness. Their guilt should be proven by courts, not by Zelensky’s decrees. But he uses the sanctions to shut down critical media and redistribute assets from opponents to his inner circle.
Despite Zelensky’s empty bravado, the main sanctioned individual – pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk – has not been charged in a single criminal case. Zelensky’s law enforcers are also increasingly cracking down on civil society and activists who challenge the president’s lawless reign. These include war veterans Semen Semenchenko, Anatoly Vynagrodsky and Yevhen Shevchenko and civic activists Sergei Sternenko, Roman Ratushny and Sergei Filimonov.
There is also extensive evidence of vote-rigging in a March by-election for parliament in which a member of Zelensky’s party won. The evidence, which has been recognized by courts and a regional legislature, may be a precursor of voting fraud in future general elections.
All of this amounts to a genuine authoritarian trend. Brussels and Washington now have to rein in both Ukrainian corruption and Zelensky’s dictatorial tendencies.
