“The scandal with the prosecutors and the president’s promise to punish the guilty showed that the best defense against external interference in Ukraine works in the prosecutor’s office system.”, — write: epravda.com.ua
In October 2024, a scandal broke out surrounding the leadership of the Khmelnytskyi Regional Medical and Social Expert Commission (MSEK). 100,000 were found in the office of its head, Tetyana Krupa. dollars, medical documents with signs of forgery and lists of “evaders” with surnames and fictitious diagnoses. In total, 6 million dollars in various currencies were seized from her during the search. Later it turned out that this scheme could be “crushed” by law enforcement officers. The editor-in-chief of “Censor.Net” Yuriy Butusov reported that fifty prosecutors of Khmelnytskyi region, led by the head Oleksiy Oliynyk, were disabled because of the aforementioned Krupa. According to the calculations of the EP, every fifth prosecutor in Ukraine received pension payments, which are provided both for years of service and for disability. In response, the Attorney General’s Office announced a large-scale official investigation into prosecutors who may be receiving pensions under false pretenses. “The large-scale official investigation concerns not only Khmelnytskyi prosecutors, but all prosecutor’s offices – all levels, including the Prosecutor General’s Office – and is extremely important for the entire system,” the law enforcement officers promised. President Volodymyr Zelenskyi himself called for the punishment of the guilty, who convened a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) because of this situation. What are the results of cleaning the system almost three months after the scandal?Advertisement: Read also: Impunity and permissiveness. Why MSEK employees caught for corruption are not put behind bars The EP analyzed the declarations of prosecutors “after dismissal” (submitted within 20 days after the actual dismissal from work) for 2024 and the beginning of 2025 in order to assess the personnel flow in the prosecutor’s office. The reason is simple – after the start of the scandal, Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin resigned, and you can see the corresponding declaration on the website of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAZK). Also, the mass media reported that at least five heads of regional prosecutor’s offices and the head of one of the specialized prosecutor’s offices in the field of defense have written applications to resign from their positions. It seemed that a purge in the ranks of this structure could not be avoided. However, the reality turned out to be somewhat different. Advertisement: From the beginning of 2024 to January 12, 2025, the EP counted 501 declarations of dismissal from positions in the prosecutor’s office. However, there has not been a significant surge in resignations that might have been expected after the October scandal and Kostin’s resignation. What’s more, not a single dismissal among the prosecutors of Khmelnytskyi and Cherkasy Oblasts took place. It was in these regions, as the EP analysis showed, that the number of persons with disabilities increased abnormally during the Great War. Thus, the share of prosecutors with a pension in Khmelnytskyi region was the largest among all prosecutor’s offices – more than 30%. However, even in such cases, dismissal does not always mean the final termination of a career in the system. As another data project of the EP shows, more than 40% of transfers, if it is not retirement, take place in the middle of the power horizon or between other authorities. In particular, as regards the half a thousand prosecutors who resigned in 2024, 185 of them found their place in other law enforcement agencies (NABU, SBI). On the eve of the New Year, the head of the Anti-corruption Center Vitaliy Shabunin and some people’s deputies provided similar data on personnel changes in the prosecutor’s office over the past three months, referring to the answers received to their inquiries. “Out of more than half a thousand disabled prosecutors, as many as five were dismissed. Five dismissed disabled prosecutors out of half a thousand is another “phenomenal” result of the effective managers of Zelenskyi/Yermak. Out of 67 disabled prosecutors in Khmelnytskyi, the Prosecutor General’s Office failed check the illegality of the status of none!”, Shabunin said. Read also: Prosecutors with disabilities. How many of them in Ukraine have the status of persons with disabilities? In turn, in early January 2025, the head of the Ministry of Health, Viktor Lyashko, confirmed the information that the revision of the decisions of the MSEK regarding prosecutors has not yet been carried out. Shabunin believes that the further results of the inspections will be hidden from the public, as the Prosecutor General’s Office has submitted all its preliminary conclusions to the main department of the State Bureau of Investigation, which is conducting criminal proceedings in this case. Thus, this information has become a secret of the investigation and will not be made public. So far, it seems, the prosecution system has calmly survived its biggest scandal in the last decade.