A new broom sweeps clean. Speaking of prosecutors, it should be added—and sweeps clean. Vitaliy Yarema, appointed head of the Prosecutor General's Office at the end of June, in addition to reshuffling the leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office, has also firmly established a firm grip on his predecessor Oleg Makhnitsky's protégés in regional agencies. "Prokurorskaya Pravda" decided to examine the specifics of this reshuffle among the country's top prosecutors.
Personnel rotations with the aim of “transferring” to another place
It's worth noting that with the arrival of Vitaliy Yarema, the Prosecutor General's Office (GPU) has been actively reorganizing its existing personnel. The overall staffing level of the GPU has been reduced by more than 1,5 positions. Of course, personnel changes in the regional prosecutor's offices have also been implemented.
The replacement of prosecutors wasn't based on any professional expediency, but simply to "transfer" one person or another to the "right" region. It's no secret that some prosecutorial officials had held their positions for ages, and their "work" had become so repulsive to local residents that it became necessary to "lustrate" them. However, as we know, prosecutors don't abandon their own, and so new lucrative positions were prepared for them.
Based on Mr. Yarema's logic, prosecutors should not sit in one place for too long, relax, and their constant movement "from place to place" allows them to stay in working order.
Thus, among the latest "reshuffles" of Grandmaster Yarema were the prosecutors of the Kharkiv and Poltava regions. Yuriy Danilchenko, previously head of the Prosecutor General's Office's Department for the Protection of Citizens' Rights, was appointed first.
Danilchenko built his career in the Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions, where he served as deputy prosecutor and regional prosecutor. More interestingly, after leaving the police, Danilchenko took a job at Nadra Bank, owned by oligarch Dmytro Firtash. At Nadra, the current Kharkiv prosecutor held the position of vice president of the board, which speaks to his high-level connections.
Vasyl Sinchuk, who vacated the Kharkiv prosecutor's office for Danilchenko, took over the Poltava Regional Prosecutor's Office from Oleksandr Zakoretsky. However, he only served three days in the position before being appointed... Prosecutor of Crimea.
How he will fulfill his duties in the territory now under Russian control is unclear. However, Sinchuk himself, speaking about his work on the peninsula, notes that he will work "responsibly and actively," but will still be working in mainland Ukraine. Well, history is repeating itself, with two prosecutors simultaneously serving in the same position, as the country once even had two heads of the Prosecutor General's Office.
Therefore, the former prosecutor of the Vasylkiv inter-district prosecutor's office, Yan Strelyuk, was recently appointed to the newly vacated position of regional prosecutor.
The reason for Prosecutor Strelyuk's "resignation" from his previous post was a "friendly visit" by fighters from MP Oleh Lyashko's phantom battalion, "Ukraine." The "Lyashkoites" accused Strelyuk of fabricating criminal cases, failing to respond to the actions of the "Tiger" and "Bars" special forces units in Vasylkiv during the Maidan protests, negligence in investigating high-profile cases they had repeatedly addressed, budget fraud, utility cases, and so on.
In short, Ukrainian-style lustration was quite successful – and now Strelyuk has moved from his post as district prosecutor to… the regional head of the supervisory agency.
But former Poltava region prosecutor Oleksandr Zakoretsky was forced to resign from the prosecutor's office. During his tenure in Poltava, a conflict erupted between the regional prosecutor's office and the mayor of the regional center, Oleksandr Mamai.
On Zakoretsky's orders, "masked show" operatives raided Poltava City Hall in April of this year, conducting searches with the aim of "uncovering instances of corruption in the city council." Mamai, for his part, responded to this turn of events by politicizing the situation, claiming that Zakoretsky's actions were aimed at triggering early elections and installing Svoboda MP Yuriy Bublik in the mayoral seat. The mayor managed to "outwit" the prosecutor, as his incursion into the city executive committee coincided with Svoboda activists' calls for early elections in Poltava.
Yarema has made enemies: his "former" friends are taking him to court.
The western regions of the country were also affected by Yarema's broom. Mykola Hoshovsky, who previously served as the first deputy head of the Main Directorate for Supervision of Criminal Proceedings of the Prosecutor General's Office, was appointed Prosecutor of the Lviv Oblast. Meanwhile, Volodymyr Gural, who previously headed the regional branch of the Prosecutor General's Office in Lviv Oblast, was demoted and now serves as Hoshovsky's first deputy.
Interestingly, both local public activists and regional authorities, represented by Governor Iryna Sekh, once opposed Gural's appointment as Lviv Oblast Prosecutor. The reason was allegedly the prosecutor's poor reputation, which included refusing to take on investigations or suspending cases without receiving a bribe of at least $10. This earned him the apt nickname "Ten." As a result, Governor Sekh asked the Prosecutor General's Office leadership to initiate an investigation into Gural's activities. Gural ultimately lost his position under Prosecutor General Yarema.
From his first days in office, the new prosecutor, Goshovsky, bluntly declared that under his leadership, there would be no bribery or other corrupt practices in the region. However, the regional prosecutor's first steps already suggest that the swamp, it seems, does suck you in once you step into it.
Thus, Goshovskyi has already managed to gain publicity for a generally good cause—aid to the army. However, the 55 hryvnias spent on repairing an armored personnel carrier at the Lviv Armored Plant were collected from regional prosecutor's office employees on a voluntary-compulsory basis. According to an informed source, Goshovskyi tacitly ordered the money to be deducted from the salaries of regional prosecutor's office employees.
But the real scandal surrounding the change of regional prosecutor unfolded in Volyn. Volodymyr Kotsura, dismissed by Yarema, intends to pursue his reinstatement in court and regain the regional prosecutor's seat. Interestingly, according to Anatoly Tsekhosh, Kotsura's representative in court, after Vitaly Yarema was appointed Prosecutor General, before Kotsura's dismissal, he was summoned to Reznitskaya Street several times with an urgent "request" to resign.
For now, Vadim Maksimov, who previously worked as the prosecutor of the Darnitsky district of Kyiv, is working in Kotsura’s place.
New appointments also affected the Khmelnytskyi Oblast Prosecutor's Office, where Oleh Sinishin took over from Makhnitsky's protégé, Ruslan Martynenko. Notably, as in Lviv, Martynenko reported to his new boss and now serves as the First Deputy Prosecutor of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast.
But in this case, these two men are truly connected by a common cause: the protection of the illegal amber mining business in the Khmelnytskyi region. After Right Sector activist Oleksandr Muzychko (popularly known as Sashko Bilyi), who had taken over the illegal business, was murdered under mysterious circumstances in March of this year, Martynenko joined the case. Sinishin, appointed in his place, also has experience in the amber case—he worked in the prosecutor's offices of the Horodotsky and Zhydachiv districts of the Lviv region, where illegal amber mining is also thriving.
New blood: "young and honest" and a lover of corporate events
The capital region wasn't spared from prosecutorial changes either. Viktor Bezkorovayny, a frequent party-goer, was appointed Kyiv Oblast Prosecutor.
The Kirovohrad region also saw new appointments of the head of the Prosecutor General's Office: Makhnitsky's protégé, Serhiy Zholonko, was replaced by Mykhailo Gavrilyuk in early August.
It is noteworthy that at one time, he served as deputy head of the Prosecutor General's Office to Viktor Pshonka, and it was Gavrilyuk who brought criminal cases against Yuriy Lutsenko and Yulia Tymoshenko to court.
The Kirovohrad prosecutor also has another "sin." During the Maidan, he transferred all high-profile cases from the Prosecutor General's Office to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), including the murders of Shcherban and Gongadze, the investigation into former President Kuchma, and so on. The SBU, in turn, decided which documents to transfer and how. Thus, the former regime covered its tracks in the investigations of high-profile cases. And Gavrilyuk was the main "coverer" in this regard.
Zholonko, following the example of many former officials, was appointed Gavrilyuk's first deputy. He is also linked to scandals. Zholonko is accused of stalling the investigation into crimes that took place during the Kirovohrad "Euromaidan" protests, and judges who ruled against Maidan protesters were also not held accountable.
The promotion also marked the arrival of Andriy Priz, the current Odesa Oblast Prosecutor, who had previously served as the capital's Deputy Prosecutor, to bow to Vitaliy Yarema. The new prosecutor immediately replaced several of his deputies and initiated a large-scale personnel audit involving Prosecutor General's Office (GPU) specialists.
Priz replaced Nikolai Stoyanov, who was fired, in his own words, simply because "the country's leadership didn't know him." Therefore, following the example of his Volyn colleague, the former regional prosecutor began challenging his dismissal in court, calling the current state of affairs in the Prosecutor General's Office under Yarema's leadership "horrible."
However, during Makhnitsky's tenure as Prosecutor General, two regional prosecutors served in the Odesa region. Before the rebellious Stoyanov, Ihor Borshulyak had already served there, although his career was cut short by the tragedy at the Trade Unions House.
The leadership of the prosecutor's office in the neighboring Mykolaiv region has also changed, with Volodymyr Komashko appointed regional prosecutor in August. Interestingly, his successor will be former prosecutor of the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions Mykola Stoyanov, who, as we've already mentioned, is currently suing the Prosecutor General's Office leadership.
Makhnitsky's appointee in Mykolaiv region, Roman Zabarchuk, was forced to resign, unable to find a "warm haven" for himself, following the example of his other colleagues.
Is everything ok in the east?
Despite the fact that with the arrival of Vitaliy Yarema in the building on Reznitskaya, regional prosecutors in most of the central and southern regions lost their positions, and a significant "shake-up" was also carried out in the western and northern regions, the "blank spot" in this entire story remains the eastern part of Ukraine.
The prosecutors of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Nikolai Frantovsky and Sergei Stos, will remain in their posts. However, these are regions where the work of the prosecutor's office is effectively paralyzed, and where their employees are killed and held captive by militants.
In connection with a series of personnel rotations in the country's regional prosecutor's offices, Prokurorskaya Pravda would like to inquire:
What's driving most of the new regional prosecutor appointments: a desire to build a team to suit their own needs in order to hold on to their positions for as long as possible, or a simple desire to simply "remove" former Prosecutor General Oleg Makhnitsky's people?
— In what other areas are personnel changes planned, with the aim of a final “cleansing” of Makhnitsky’s appointees?
— Will Yarema sue dissatisfied regional prosecutors over his decision to fire them, and will he explain his personnel decisions to anyone?
— What was the GPU leadership guided by when it decided to leave the prosecutors of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in office, where the agency's work is effectively paralyzed?
Prosecutor's Truth
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