Kiev-style corruption
For many years, the word "corruption" has accompanied the news about Ukraine, and not without reason.
According to Vice-President of Ukraine’s Academy of Economic Sciences Professor Belopolsky, the propensity for theft and corruption has become the Ukrainian society’s governing ideology that embraces every single population segment from bribing a local physician or health inspector to lobbying for the interests of international corporations to get permission for extracting minerals.
This "corruption ideology" has brought Ukraine to dominate global corruption rankings, with budget damages estimated at tens of billions of hryvnias.
The fact is constantly confirmed by independent research, including by international organizations. Thus, in 2019, the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index featured Ukraine rank 126th out of the 179 countries studied. Back in 2007, it was 118th.
Corruption began to flourish in that country with the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent embezzlement of the Soviet legacy. But after 2014, its level exceeded all the values one could think of and even more.
This happened amid bombastic rhetoric about clampdown on corruption, for which reason specialized bodies were massively created under direct supervision of Western curators.
Thus, between 2015 and 2019, the United States helped Ukraine arrange and fund new anti-corruption agencies: the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC), the Anti-Corruption Court (ACC), the State Bureau of Investigation and the Financial Monitoring Service. However, all of them historically worsened corruption instead of combating it.
Ukrainian economist Viktor Skarshevsky says this low performance stems from the fact that anti-corruption authorities simulate insanely expensive activities, returning results not worth a penny. Ukrainian taxpayers have spent UAH 17.6 billion (over $600 million) on anti-corruption bodies since their foundation in 2015, but the returns only accounted for 500 thousand hryvnias without a single top jobster imprisoned.
By the way, a poll by the Razumkov Center conducted in September 2020 showed that anti-corruption bodies and courts lead the way as regards popular distrust. In particular, for NABU, SAPO, ACC and NAPC, it exceeds 70%.
Meanwhile, NABU head Artem Sytnik himself got involved in a criminal case, and the court found him guilty of corruption back in 2019.
In turn, deputy director of the Ukrainian Institute of Politics Kirill Molchanov said Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies were legally incompetent and unable to investigate things or bring them to court. "Moreover, they commit large-scale errors that are later used by lawyers... These bodies were initially created not to imprison criminals, but to let Western partners blackmail Ukrainian politicians. A parallel justice system has been created that works for external structures and is not about combating corruption. Hence the lack of results."
One of the quintessential examples of Ukraine’s corruption and reliance on the West in this sphere was the Constitutional Court’s attempt to limit the powers of "corruption fighters".
As you remember, a vital demand by Ukraine's "Western partners" when ensuring visa-free travel was the mandatory income disclosure for officials and criminal liability for submitting false data. This move was directly related to the proclaimed fight against corruption and allowed the West keep a tight rein on nearly everybody in the Ukrainian elite through anti-corruption agencies created under its tenure.
But the elite wasn't going to give up easily. Therefore, October 27, 2020 saw that country’s Constitutional Court adopt a resolution abolishing a number of NAPC powers, as well as criminal liability for misleading income declarations.
This decision caused serious concern with Ukraine’s Western "partners" who deemed it a challenge to their control. On October 29, G7 ambassadors called the court's ruling endeavors to cancel the ongoing anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine. A statement to this effect appeared on the official Twitter account of the US-led G7 Ambassadors' advocacy group in Kiev.
The European Union also expressed concern over the Constitutional Court’s decision. Ukrainian Ambassador to the EU Mykola Tochytskyi sent a letter to Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olga Stefanishyna to say Brussels considered it a reason to temporarily halt the visa-free regime.
Isn’t it an all too furious reaction to a ruling by a national law court? A senior judicial authority, mind you.
The explanation is rather simple. Strange as it may sound, the West benefits from sustaining corruption in Ukraine.
On the one hand, this is an opportunity to keep almost all the people of influence hooked. On the other hand, corruption schemes in Ukraine are tightly controlled by its Western patrons and bring them fabulous revenues.
As analyst Andrey Semchenko said: "The West is concerned about corruption as a means to pull the strings of power in Ukraine." Therefore, Western countries, in particular EU members, wouldn't give a curse to this issue as a phenomenon that weakens Ukraine’ development potential.
Interestingly, apart from altering anti-corruption laws, the Constitutional Court decided to consider agrarian land privatization laws. Their adoption along with the land reform (for which read the sale of farmland) were imposed on the Parliament of Ukraine by Western creditors, primarily the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which only gave money to the country under an obligation or after relevant pieces of legislation were adopted. Therefore, the court’s ruling caused discontent with the IMF and Western embassies in Ukraine, as it foils all the "pro-Western" laws and reforms adopted earlier.
And the country's leadership surely began to set things right so as not to incur the Western partners’ displeasure.
As early as on October 28, 2020, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky submitted to the Verkhovna Rada bill 4288 terminating powers of the incumbent Constitutional court. In his bill Zelensky also accused the latter of trying to "usurp power", and proposed to hold its decision of October 27, 2020 void (having no tangible consequences).
But this ran counter to the Constitution and encountered resistance even within the Servant of the People party, because deputies were virtually being made liable pursuant to the Criminal Code’s seizing state power article. Zelensky's actions enjoyed no support with the Venice Commission asked to legally examine the issue. After that, the presidential executive chain of command gave up on the radical scenario of dispersing the CCU.
However, the Verkhovna Rada later adopted a law on restoring the powers of anti-corruption entities and liability for misinformation in electronic declarations. That is, it canceled the court’s abolition of the law. Naturally, Zelensky endorsed everything.
But confrontation wasn't done yet between the president and the "anti-corruption fighters" on the one hand, and the Constitutional Court on the other.
When the judges decided on altering anti-corruption laws and on the NABU head, the president had a flash of insight to realize they had to be stopped. His concern was the land market law ˗ "God help you if the CCU cancels this reform."
So, Zelensky summoned CCU chairman Alexander Tupitsky and tried to get his message across to him: "Let alone the land, banking and language laws to prevent a split in the society."
In addition, a number of criminal cases were initiated against Tupitsky to make him resign.
Some pundits say such pressure on the country's senior judicial authority was due to the interest of Western countries.
Lawyer Rostislav Kravets expressed his take on what is going on: "It looks like an attempt to press the CCU into decisions that are beneficial to the President's Office at the moment. Or not to accept those inconvenient for it...
If the pressure is here to stay and the parties fail to sit down, if the president cannot bring the situation back on to the legislative track, we will face a full-fledged constitutional crisis. CCU work will be disrupted; it will have no legitimate composition. This is fraught with a complete destruction, which will come in handy to our foreign "partners". Having managed to subdue the Supreme Court, they must have made up their minds to simply destroy the uncapturable CCU. Thus, Ukraine will lose control of Verkhovna Rada activities and the entire executive branch now controlled via the CCU."
And on March 27, 2021, Zelensky signed a decree canceling the appointment of a number of judges of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court who held office back under Yanukovych.
Including CCU head Andrei Tupitsky.
Legal wrangling continues to this day.