Let us remember the service of each Prosecutor General of Ukraine

In anticipation of the possible resignation of Vitaly Yarema, Ukraine is Young recalls the names of those who at different times and under different circumstances acted as predecessors of the current Prosecutor General. Sometimes it is useful to leaf through the pages of history and try to at least learn something from it.

The first one went. Behind him are the rest

The first Prosecutor General of independent Ukraine was Viktor Shishkin (1991-1993). According to legend (since we are talking about almost “legendary” times), he established himself as an honest and incorruptible official. In addition to the prosecutor’s office, he was elected as a people’s deputy three times – to the parliament of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd convocations. In 2001-2002, he defended defendants in a case initiated based on the events of the “Ukraine without Kuchma” movement.

The next General is Vladimir Datsyuk (1993-1995). According to rumors, the Verkhovna Rada removed Datsyuk from the post of Prosecutor General due to the “excessive attention” of the Prosecutor General’s Office to Alexander Tkachenko (the case of misuse of funds by the Earth and People association, the basis of the business of the future speaker and vice-speaker of the Ukrainian parliament A). Datsyuk was “gone” so quickly that he didn’t even have time to apply for his pension.

Next was Grigory Vorsinov. He also spent two years in the prosecutor’s chair, from 1995 to 1997. According to the procedure, Vorsinov’s candidacy was submitted to the Council for consideration by President Leonid Kuchma, and they said that his choice was by no means accidental. And although Vorsinov himself gave his word that he had no contact with Leonid Kuchma before his appointment, they did not believe him behind the scenes. However, the new head of the GPU was not associated with Leonid Kuchma as much as with the newly elected Prime Minister Pavel Lazarenko, whom the press called Vorsinov’s godfather.

After Vorsinov, a “full-fledged” Prosecutor General was not appointed for a long time. For about a year (from July 1997 to April 1998) “acting” The Prosecutor General was Oleg Litvak – a very interesting figure. He also found himself tied into a tight ball along with Kuchma and Lazarenko, but he became famous even earlier – in the last days of the existence of the USSR. Litvak had to arrest the Minister of Defense Yazov and the Chairman of the USSR KGB Kryuchkov after the unsuccessful putsch in 1991. According to legend, he also received testimony from USSR President Gorbachev after his return from Foros to Moscow.

In general, Oleg Litvak, perhaps, was truly the only legendary – in the positive sense of the word – prosecutor general of independent Ukraine. During the “late USSR” O. Litvak was the head of one of the so-called. “Andropov” investigative teams of the USSR Prosecutor General’s Office, which investigated the most complex and high-profile corruption crimes of the highest Soviet nomenklatura. But O. Litvak’s professionalism and high moral qualities were not in demand in independent Ukraine at that time, and he was “retired”, replaced by a more “tame” Prosecutor General – A.).

After Litvak, Bogdan Ferenc was the “acting” Prosecutor General for three months (from April to July 1998). This is one of the shortest tenures of an official in this position, but still not a record. Although Ferenc did not make the Prosecutor General, he became famous as a lawyer – in 2002 he defended the widow of Igor Alexandrov, a murdered journalist, and closer to our time he represented the interests of the imprisoned Yulia Tymoshenko.

Prosecutors of the Kuchma era: Potebenko, Piskun, Vasiliev

Ferenc’s successor was Mikhail Potebenko (1998-2002). An iconic and predominantly negative character. For many, Potebenko is in the same association with Lesya and Miroslava Gongadze, who wipe away tears in parliament (to the accompaniment of M. Potebenko’s speech) or under the walls of the Prosecutor General’s Office, where once again women did not receive answers to the questions that interested them.

Tongue-tied and, it seemed, poorly educated, Potebenko was remembered by the calling card word “khvalsh” and his 99.6% (this is how he assessed the likelihood that the “Tarascha body” belongs to Georgy Gongadze). He miraculously retained his post during the “cassette scandal”, when the heads of the SBU head Leonid Derkach and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuriy Kravchenko were “released” (they were released in February and March 2001, respectively).

Potebenko was one of the first officials who only confused this investigation, but the wave of protests and general indignation, reaching its climax in early 2001, then sharply declined. Everyone who has remained in the chair until now (and this applies to both Potebenko and Kuchma) successfully sat until the end of the term. After his memorable prosecutorial tenure, Potebenko even managed to become a people’s deputy – in 4 years in the Verkhovna Rada, Potebenko changed eight factions and groups, and such omnivorousness did not go unappreciated: Potebenko has long been on the sidelines.

Like, in fact, Svyatoslav Piskun. He first came to the post for more than a year, occupying the chair of the Prosecutor General from July 2002 to the end of October 2003. Then he was replaced by Gennady Vasiliev (we will return to him later). From December 2004 to October 2005, Piskun was again the Prosecutor General. Next, Alexander Medvedko “prosecuted”, after him Reznitskaya was headed by Piskun – for the third time. True, only for a month. This was in May 2007.

We will consider all the “Piskunov” – the first, second and third – en masse. The first time Piskun was fired from his post according to Leonid Kuchma’s proposal. This happened after the Coordination Committee on Combating Organized Crime under the President of Ukraine made relevant recommendations after conducting another audit of the work of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

But already on December 10, 2004, Piskun defended his right to hold the post of Prosecutor General. This happened after the start of the Orange Revolution. Having barely crossed the threshold of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Piskun canceled the decision to close the criminal case on the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko. After this, the GPU opened a criminal case against falsifiers from the Central Election Commission.

It was clear that Piskun really wanted to prolong his stay in the Prosecutor General’s Office. It was for this purpose that the GPU persecuted ex-Kuchmists Igor Bakai, Ivan Rizak, Ruslana BodelanaVladimir Shcherban (ex “governor” of Sumy region), Anatoly Zasukha. However, in the end, all of them were either released from custody according to court decisions, or managed to move abroad. A little time passed, and Piskun was about to go into politics, but between two deputies, in 2006-2010. (in both cases, Piskun went to the Rada on the PR lists) he managed to squeeze into the GPU once again. President Yushchenko restored him to his previous position, and he sent him into resignation.

But let’s go back to 2003, when Reznitskaya was briefly headed by Gennady Vasiliev.

In 2003, Vasiliev occupied the chair of vice-speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and was a man not without a prosecutor’s past. At one time he served as the prosecutor of the Donetsk region, later transferring this chair to Viktor Pshonka.

In 2002, he was elected to parliament in one of the Donetsk majoritarian constituencies. It is difficult to say why Leonid Kuchma chose him from several options. Our own version: it was in Kuchma’s interests to destabilize the situation in parliament. After all, the people’s representatives willingly found the votes to promote Vasiliev to the Prosecutor General, so that they could immediately grab each other’s throats for the vacant position of vice-speaker.

This is what concerns the history of Vasiliev’s appointment. As for his resignation, everything is still much simpler. Vasilyev’s “head” was on the list of Our Ukraine’s demands during the vote for political reform. Vasiliev’s figure was nothing special, so they sacrificed him quite easily. And then Piskun II just arrived with his court decision regarding his reinstatement in the GPU, which Themis accepted just the next day after Vasilyev’s “liquidation”…
A little more Piskun and a lot of Medvedko

Our next hero is Alexander Medvedko, one of the “long-living” prosecutors. He was in office twice: in 2005-2007. and in 2007-2010s. We will not delve into his biography, but as for his effectiveness, even under this Prosecutor General, the disclosure of particularly high-profile cases never happened. Neither the murder of Georgy Gongadze nor the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko was solved.

The death of ex-Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yuri Kravchenko was also not investigated (details in the publications: How Yuri Kravchenko was killed and “buried” the investigation. Part one and How Yuri Kravchenko was killed. Part two) and incidents related to the 2004 presidential campaign – establishing a parallel servers for counting votes, beating people near the Central Election Commission and the like.

Two years after Medvedko’s appointment – ​​when Viktor Yushchenko decided to stop the uncontrolled flow of parliamentary “carcasses” into the coalition and dissolve parliament – ​​the conflict between Bankova and Reznitskaya deepened.

The then President of Ukraine was no longer satisfied with his Prosecutor General. But after the announcement of early parliamentary elections, the Shevchenko court of Kyiv decided to reinstate Svyatoslav Piskun. Which happened just in time.

For Piskun, this was already the third “attack” on Reznitskaya, but he very quickly lost common ground with Yushchenko and was forced to give way to Viktor Shemchuk, the prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the acting Prosecutor General. What happened after Shemchuk’s appointment is well known. We are talking about the notorious storming of the General Prosecutor’s Office building, organized by Berkut under the direct leadership of Vasily Tsushko (then Minister of Internal Affairs – A.). The “anti-crisis” coalition thus made Piskun feel its support.

But this did not help Piskun. After Shemchuk, in the summer of 2007, Alexander Medvedko again became Prosecutor General. In this post, he successfully survived early parliamentary elections, the election of a new government led by Yulia Tymoshenko, the formation of a new coalition, and various personnel changes that affected everyone, but not him. In 2010, his five-year term expired. Medvedko’s successor was Viktor Pshonka.

New era

Viktor Pshonka was the first and so far the only Prosecutor General who did not complete his term by escaping abroad. It is difficult to say what 4 years of his reign will be remembered for. Perhaps the case related to the writer Maria Matios, who stated that she was systematically persecuted by the prosecutor’s office – after the communists were not satisfied with the place in her “Tired pages from her autobiography,” where she compares the Kyiv stele erected in honor of the victory in World War II, with a phallus. I also remember that Pshonka, together with his VIP neighbors, owed 50 thousand hryvnia for utilities (we are talking about an apartment on Vladimirskaya Street, 49).

However, the most was revealed after the protagonist escaped. Here we have a common gaming business with Gennady Kernes, and a family contract with our son Artem (the son received orders to close/initiate criminal cases, and the father carried them out).

And another Mezhyhirya in the “bykoko” style – with a portrait of Pshonka in the form of Caesar and a bunch of rarities, including Faberge products, collections of unique weapons, valuable paintings and sculptures.

Now Pshonka is hiding in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), where he was allowed to go, and, according to legend, he feels quite well there.

After this, the first prosecutor of the Revolution of Dignity became Svoboda member Oleg Makhnitsky. All the incriminating evidence on Makhnitsky floating on the Internet was summed up by Svyatoslav Oliynyk, a member of the team of Dnepropetrovsk “governor” Kolomoisky: “Now there is a lot of talk about how Makhnitsky became rich in three months – competent circles estimate his income at $300 million. Personally, I perceive this figure as absolutely real.

Pshonka installed gold switches in his house, and Makhnitsky, they say, bought a Hyatt. In the Dnepropetrovsk region, the protege of Makhnitsky and Baganets, a certain Fedik, holds the position of prosecutor. This bastard collects money from drug dealers, and on every occasion he remembers the Heavenly Hundred and goes to church on Sunday,” noted Oleynik.

Makhnitsky himself categorically denied all these accusations, swore that he had nothing to do with Hayat and expressed his readiness to undergo a polygraph test. And yet he was dismissed.

In June 2014, newly elected President Petro Poroshenko proposed Vitaliy Yarema to replace Makhnitsky. “UM” wrote a lot and often about Yarem. 121 people’s deputies are now demanding consideration of the issue of his resignation, while the head of the GPU is accused of inaction in the investigation of the bloody events on the Maidan and crimes committed by Yanukovych’s entourage. And also promoting corruption, which flourished especially wildly under Yarem. One of the latest examples is associated with Yarema’s deputy Anatoly Danilenko, who was caught taking possession of 140 hectares of state land.

Sources claim that Petro Poroshenko was allegedly persuaded to replace Yarema with another person. If the President, whose competence is to propose the Prosecutor General to the Rada, really agreed to part with the head of the GPU, this will mean that Yarema was not helped by all his recent manipulations around the law on conviction in absentia and promises to begin the extradition procedure for Yanukovych. Everything is good in its time, but Vitaly Yarema’s time is obviously coming to an end. Therefore, the current head of Reznitskaya smoothly moves into the category of, as ex-Prime Minister Azarov would say, “a bastard,” and his successor becomes…

We don’t know the most interesting thing yet, but soon, apparently, we will know.

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Natalya Lebed, published in the publication Ukraine is Young

Translation: Argument