History teaches us nothing. Times don't change, and those who come to power repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Let's put it briefly: Shokin stepped on the same rake as Pshonka, and until civil society (at least a fraction of it) sees (or doesn't see) the consequences of the blow, the country's main "guardian" of the law will pretend it doesn't hurt him at all, and even feels good about it. It's a pleasure to be working again with old friends and trusted figures from the Kuchma era, who inspire confidence and therefore will be able to effectively (or so Shokin claims) solve crimes and fight the "system."
But wait a minute, we had a revolution here, the government changed, so what old cadres can there be? – And for a systemic person who has no intention of making any "leftist" moves toward his own kind, this means absolutely nothing. Some were jumping around, while others were "knocking out" positions in the GPU – everyone was "repaid" a hundredfold, because...
The shot decided everything!
Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, was modestly appointed to his post in February of this year, but after some time, he began to demonstrate completely different behavior in terms of personnel appointments both at the regional level and within the Prosecutor General's Office itself. While his predecessor, Vitaliy Yarema, was, to put it mildly, not a natural fit for the prosecutorial environment, he "left" the Main Directorate until the public directly pointed its finger at his deputy, godmother Danilenko, and earlier, he spent a long time choosing who to lustrate “according to the law”: Danilenko, Gerasimyuk’s deputy, or Golomsha’s first deputy (in the end, he chose the latter), personnel shake-ups are “nothing” compared to the grip of Shokin, an old-timer of the prosecutorial system.
Here, I couldn't help but recall a joke from life, or, in fact, the words of the Prosecutor General taken from a recent interview:
"There are the names of specific people who removed Klyuev from the wanted list. Will there be any accountability? Any kind?"
"It's already here. I fired them."
Let's not question the Prosecutor General's dismissal of the GPU investigators rather than their criminal prosecution; we'll leave that on his conscience. What's important here is how easily Shokin "lets go" of those appointed, incidentally, by Makhnitsky, in order to install his own people in their place. The issue isn't the quality of the investigations, but who will take them up again.
The major reshuffles began back in February, and no matter how many complimentary words the Prosecutor General uttered about his newly appointed deputy, the Georgian reformer Sakvarelidze, he secretly hoped to bring his own people back into his fold. And not at the request of Petro Poroshenko. Because personnel matters were always Shokin's top priority.
A man who promised to bring high-profile criminal cases to a close, cases that still haunt him (the Gongadze case, the Tymoshenko case), promoted Yuriy Stolyarchuk, one of Shokin's chief investigators from Piskun's time – first appointing him first deputy to Igor Shcherbina, head of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office, and then, at the end of March, deputy prosecutor general.
Shokin is also being assisted by the new law "On the Prosecutor's Office," which never entered into force (thanks to the "President's people"). According to it, Shokin cut the positions of two of his deputies back in February, and there will now be no more than six. This allows the Prosecutor General to toy with the possibility of firing the deputies he inherited from Vitaliy Yarema if they don't accept the new rules.
The game is this: to show a functioning, functionally equipped prosecutor's office of the country, which copes with the tasks set by the President.
What rules does Shokin set here: he quickly revives those who were eliminated along with him during the investigation of high-profile criminal cases “illegally”; he deals with offending competitors, like Renat Kuzmin and Co.Read more about it in the article Renat Kuzmin: The Family Business of Outlaw Prosecutors); complains about the legislative framework for the prosecutor's office, in particular the elimination of the "general shame" - the function of general supervision, as Shokin now calls it, and which, in his opinion, carries more disadvantages than advantages.
About those who no longer accept the rules of the game...
Anatoly Matios
As usual, those who feel insecure about the future due to failures in their work, or a wobbly chair beneath them because of the "law," "Poroshenko said so," and so on, try to take the rap for this in all sorts of interviews, fortunately democracy allows these bursts of intellectual creativity to be conveyed to the public.
This was the case with Viktor Shokin's predecessor, Vitaliy Yarema, when he explained the lack of a proper investigation into the "Maidan case," the "sanctions list case," the unfair "desertion" cases, the Ilovaisk tragedy, and, ultimately, his wealthy deputies. He cited various reasons for the "fairness" of his work, as he put it, but ultimately, in early February, he heard the President say, "Thank you for your work!"
Even earlier, the groundwork had been laid for the dismissal of those wealthiest and most loyal to Yarema—Anatoliy Danilenko, Oleh Bachun, and Mykola Gerasimyuk. In just a few months, the "Maidan protégés" and Vitaliy Yarema himself lost their positions through leaks and harsh personnel decisions at the top.
Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoly Matios has also come close to this list of his former colleagues. In recent interviews with "democratic" media, he vividly explains the "downsides of the system" in which he works, but most importantly, there are fair court decisions on all issues. "Before us is God and the court," Matios says, perhaps jokingly, revisiting the topical discussion of unfair rulings against the soldiers who defended him, or perhaps he truly has a basis for counting on the support of Themis.
This is reflected in the fact that Matios himself has long been wanted on the list of lustrated officials, and therefore Yarema has been repeatedly reminded that he, who has worked in the highest echelons of power since 1997 under both Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych, and who served as deputy head of the Main Control Department of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine from 2010 to 2012, cannot hold this position, according to the law "On the Purification of Power."
Moved on, forgotten. Then there's more: the scandal surrounding the "prosecutor's battalion," the awarding of medals for a war in which there were no prosecutors (including Matios himself), the "under-delivery" of the brave comrades of the Chief Military Prosecutor, the manipulation of figures regarding the number of soldiers killed in the ATO zone and the "Ilovaisk cauldron"...
The list could go on, so it's best to say right away that Matios, as someone especially gifted at surviving in any conditions, immediately began making moves to warm his bottom in all sorts of high-ranking government positions.
He began with the most prominent position—head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. It was for this position that he had applied for, as if insuring himself against the infamy of a military prosecutor, as an experienced anti-corruption fighter.
No trial, no fulfillment—Matios's candidacy was eliminated almost immediately. Then, the "experienced anti-corruption fighter," right next to the vacant Odessa Oblast prosecutor's seat, was suddenly offered the position of the region's chief law enforcement officer. Of course, given the military prosecutor's office's less-than-stellar performance, to put it mildly, such a position would have seemed like a "saving move for Private Matios."
But drowning men must save themselves: he decided to renounce his position (after all, it's not as many privileges as he currently enjoys) and instead launch new public messaging. For Odesa, they appointed the hitherto inconspicuous figure of Roman Govda, and Matios began to preach about the work of the military prosecutor's office "in a new way."
For the country's Chief Military Prosecutor, this means carving out new "spheres of influence" for himself by sticking his nose into the defense industry and signing up as a criminal investigator. To explain the sarcasm, here are a few examples from his interview:
The case against a prosecutor from Kramatorsk. "For a month and a half, we've been documenting cases of law enforcement officials receiving improper benefits. Initially, we registered proceedings against one individual—a police officer—but then it turned out to be an extensive network leading to the Kramatorsk prosecutor. The prosecutors were arrested, the court set their bail at 3 million hryvnias, which they failed to post, and are now under investigation."
Matios admits that recording bribes in law enforcement agencies and the prosecutor's office is not his direct responsibility, but in consultation with the Prosecutor General, he made the decision to involve military prosecutors in the investigation.
Why this sudden hyperactivity? To curry favor, maybe I'll get away with it?
Next up is the "Zrazhevsky case." "This is a corruption-related economic case with a fairly typical qualification—it was an attempted theft, which we were able to prevent thanks to a productive operation with a special unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' Organized Crime Control Department. We investigated the criminal case for a month, and then spent four months familiarizing Zrazhevsky and his defense attorneys, who changed hands, with the case materials, reviewing a multitude of motions, participating in court hearings to appeal his arrest warrant and the determination of over 16 million hryvnias in bail... But for now, we have what we have." (Zrazhevsky is under house arrest – PP editor's note).
How so? After all, this is the court, which, according to Matios, is the only one who establishes the correctness of the collected evidence: “the result of any criminal procedural procedure is, in particular, the court, which confirms the correctness, thoroughness and completeness of the collected evidence, which became the basis for “stunned suspicion and the direction of the indictment before trial,” he said in one interview.
This also includes the Ministry of Defense's overpayment of 120 million hryvnias for fuel purchases, which MPs recently clamored about. Interestingly, Matios agrees that theft or attempted theft and misappropriation of state property falls under the jurisdiction of internal affairs agencies, and such crimes are not classified as military cases. However, as a "specialist" in this case puts it, "if the prosecutor sees that the investigation is not objective, he has the right to assign the matter to another agency. When it comes to the state's defense capability, we take everything into our own hands."
Interestingly, Matios categorically denies allowing volunteers to manage the Ministry of Defense's financial flows, calling them essentially "pejorative creatures": "What drives people: fear, hunger, profit, and, excuse me, sex... It's quite difficult to resist this temptation. I don't want to blame anyone, but I will say this: an unprofessional person cannot be in charge of significant financial sums solely out of patriotism."
As Matios himself stated, “I expect a barrage of criticism regarding my position.”
You are right to expect this, because in addition to this criticism, you will also face criticism (without criminal prosecution for now) regarding your actions in the defense sector.
Matios's "patriotism" here is simply off the charts: excluding volunteers is a smokescreen concealing real corruption schemes in the country's defense industry, namely, the army's procurement, which the country's Chief Military Prosecutor profits from. Matios is now shielding Defense Ministry officials who have been sitting on a lucrative income for a long time, and the extra attention of volunteers and the potential for "extra mouths" (even if they weren't lobbied for by anyone) is, you know, not at all comme il faut.
And while the public awaits further resonant revelations, the ground is ripe for Matios' dismissal, as the saying goes: "time to put him in jail."
"We work according to the law—we conduct investigative actions, expert examinations, etc. So that, regardless of future developments, we can confidently say: we did everything we could," says Matios, quoting the former chief of the building on Reznitskaya Street.
Oleg Zalisko
Shokin's deputy doesn't boast as many "striking examples" of professional performance as Matios, but then again, as a protégé of Yarema and the Prosecutor General's first assistant after the lustration of Gerasimyuk, as well as Shokin's aforementioned cleverness in reducing the number of his deputies in violation of the Law on the Prosecutor's Office, it's entirely possible that the Prosecutor General will soon "cut" him as well. This move coincided with the dismissal of the notorious Oleh Bachun, but then Zalisko went on sick leave, and Shokin's equally notorious friend, Vladimir Guzyr, was appointed first deputy.
"Democratic media" are already predicting a bright future for this GPU official, raising stories from his recent past that, however, are now set to stir up public opinion.
The subject of the conversation was the purchase of a luxury property last fall – a house (essentially a castle) in the spa town of Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, for two million dollars. Situated on a 1,6-hectare plot, the house measures 520 square meters. In addition to the three-story house, the newly acquired Zalisko estate includes a guest outbuilding and an indoor swimming pool.
Journalists claim that Zalisko flies to Karlovy Vary and other European cities exclusively on charter flights, renting a Cessna Citation XLS jet (the cost per flight hour for such a plane is approximately 10 euros). Thus, each flight to and from his new home costs Zalisko at least 1 million hryvnias. Moreover, Zalisko crosses the border using a Russian passport.
Prosecutor's Truth wrote about these facts back in December, and if this has become public now, then surely another one-way charter flight for the "deputy" prosecutor general is just around the corner.
But let's recall a more important fact, in our humble opinion: Oleh Zalisko had worked in the Lviv Oblast Prosecutor's Office since 2004. The former Maidan-appointed Prosecutor General, Oleh Makhnitsky, was working in Lviv as a lawyer at the time, and to ensure his work was undisturbed, Zalisko extended a hand—not in terms of assistance, but in terms of bribery. Who would have thought that this same bribe-taking lawyer would become his boss after the "Revolution of Dignity"?
The "unknown patronage" of a Lviv prosecutor in the Poroshenko administration prevented the dismissal of young Zalisko. Now, after the collapse of the "Heavenly Hundred" case, which he himself announced last November, the lifting of international sanctions against members of former President Yanukovych's entourage and the lack of progress in investigating economic crimes by members of the previous government—a result of Mr. Zalisko's leadership of the Main Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General's Office—are the most compelling reasons to simply fire him.
Although this "hard work" helped the prosecutor save enough money for an elite mansion in Karlovy Vary, it's unlikely he'll be able to "scrounge up" enough cash to buy his way out now. Especially since he initially showed insufficient zeal for Poroshenko.
Vitaly Kasko
It was less the responsibility of the Prosecutor General's Office, but more the responsibility for returning assets to Yanukovych and his entourage, which could soon be replaced by some Georgian who, the Georgians themselves are not convinced, can handle this task.
Just before June of this year, when patience officially runs out from waiting for the evidence base for Yanukovych’s “theft,” Kasko himself will be removed (Read more about it in the article Vitaly Kasko – a swindler, a corrupt official, a "shot-down pilot").
He was appointed Deputy Prosecutor General for International Cooperation immediately following Makhnitsky's appointment. He is an international affairs specialist tasked with coordinating Ukraine's efforts to support sanctions against senior officials and to search for and return Yanukovych and Co.'s assets to Ukraine.
Since 2004, Kasko has been a consultant to the Council of Europe and other international organizations in the field of criminal justice and human rights protection. He is the author and co-author of publications on the issue of the return of criminal assets, mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, and witness protection.
But it seems destined not to publicly reveal Kasko's publications on the return of the former regime's assets to the country. Perhaps, when he's fired, he'll have time to write a treatise on the subject. Something like, "The Long Road in the Dunes: President Yanukovych's Money."
In the meantime, let's state the following: given the current situation within the Prosecutor General's Office—an agency that has become a pocket organ of the President of Ukraine (again, under yet another President) and a tool in the hands of influential groups in Ukrainian politics—why does Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin need the thrashing Matios, who is already making money from shadowy schemes in the defense industry and elsewhere, the quiet millionaire Zalisko, and the screwed-up smart aleck Kasko?
The remnants of the leadership from the time of Vitaliy Yarema, although they represent very different interest groups, will go down the same path, because Shokin is completely restoring the old prosecutorial circles of the times of Kuchma and Yushchenko.
In this regard, the "Prosecutor's Truth" has one question: if the old system is rehabilitating and defending itself in this way, then why was the "Revolution of Dignity" necessary, with hundreds of deaths, with thousands killed in eastern Ukraine?
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