Today, on September 3, the Parliament plans to review, again, the candidates for the Commission for Selection of the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.
Remember that on July 15, the Parliament refused to support 7 candidates selected by the Law Enforcement Committee. The main reason was that these sevel candidates had no experience with anti-corruption activities.
The committee, which had about two days to go before the holiday, did not grieve for too long and urgently selected seven more candidates. We decided to consider who these people were and whether the committee members had corrected their previous mistakes and made new ones.
Hanna Vlasova is the Head of the Criminal Law Department at the European University. She is the head of the NGO “Foundation of Scientists and Educators”, a lawyer and a co-founder of the company Hryshakov, Vlasova and Partners. By the way, Vlasova was a candidate for the commission last time.
Andriy Hundzhal is a managing partner of the law firm HuDeH (we did not succeed in finding information about this JSC). He previously worked in the Prosecutor General’s Office and was fired.
Oleksii Drozd is the head of the doctoral and adjunct department of the National Academy of Internal Affairs. According to MP Oleksandra Ustinova, Drozd admitted that he had no experience in anti-corruption activities.
Vitalii Kuts is a member of the All-Ukraine Criminological Association and the All-Ukraine Association of Criminal Law, LLD, professor. He also has no specific experience with anti-corruption activities, but his research is related to crime in general.
Viacheslav Navrotskyi is a researcher and lecturer in the field of criminal law at the Ukrainian Catholic University and Lviv State University of Internal Affairs. Navrotsky also has no significant experience with anti-corruption activities.
Bohdan Romaniuk is an Honored Lawyer of Ukraine, Lieutenant General, Honored Worker of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. He worked in internal affairs agencies of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and between 1994 and 1997, he was the head of the MIA Directorate in Lviv Oblast. No information was found that Romaniuk had any experience with anti-corruption apart from a mention that he participated in solving several economic crimes.
Yevhen Sobol is an LLD, Professor of the Volodymyr Vynnychenko Central Ukrainian State Pedagogical University. Given Sobol’s scientific publications, his research interests are limited to the rights of disabled people, administrative and much less criminal law. And he was also a candidate for the commission in July.
As you can see, the Committee did not take into account the main issues MPs pointed out regarding the participants of the Commission. Out of the 7 candidates, the majority are scholars from MIA universities who have nothing to do with anti-corruption. But will the parliament notice the same shortcoming this time?
It was not only us who saw this — today, we learned that the EU, key European countries and the World Bank sent a letter to the Parliament and the Presidential Office warning them of possible consequences of thoughtless decisions.
The authors of the letter refrained from individual assessments of these candidates, but indicated in advance the criteria that will determine the credibility of the competition for the new head of the SAPO. Again, the key criterion has to be significant experience with anti-corruption work.
The Verkhovna Rada must strictly abide by the law and select those candidates who undoubtedly meet the set criteria. MPs should not get involved and support the desire of individual politicians to elect an easily controlled Head of the SAPO.
