Kunitsky. Who does the Servant of the People serve?
Law and responsibility should be the same for everyone writes Apostrophe
A year of full-scale war with Russia showed who is who in the Ukrainian government. And the government begins to slowly clear itself of frankly odious personalities, collaborators and corrupt officials. Many ministers and people’s deputies have already lost not only their positions, mandates, but also Ukrainian citizenship. There is no point in listing all of them here – the list is large, it is enough to recall the deputies from the Opposition Platform for Life. However, there are still people in power who, it seems to us, do not belong there either.
Deputy Alexander Kunitsky, better known to a wide audience as the author of the YouTube channel @zpsanekthe content of which is aimed at exposing the illegal activities of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
Kunitsky criticized the police reform on his channel. Ignorance of laws and regulations, gross violations when communicating with drivers, bribery – Kunitsky showed the “updated” police in all its glory.
However, once in the Verkhovna Rada, Kunitsky in the decisive vote for some reason supported the then Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as part of the “interim” minister of the new government, informs Anti-Corruption Center.
In addition, his history with Israeli citizenship looks even more surprising. At the time of registration as a candidate for people’s deputies, Alexander Kunitsky had Israeli citizenship. According to the certificate, the Servant of the People candidate was registered at the address: Haifa, st. Ha-Tikhon, 7, 2.
Alexander Kunitsky in the Israeli army
Kunitsky himself initially denied the existence of Israeli citizenship, but eventually confirmed this fact. He also wrote a statement renouncing Israeli citizenship. The CEC decided to cancel his registration as a candidate, but it was restored by the decision of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal.
Israeli passport Kunitsky
In addition, Kunitsky accused in the forgery of documents when registering with the CEC, and then removed from registration due to violation of the requirements of the electoral law. However, he was able recover through the court.
Already in the position of people’s deputy, Kunitsky falls into another scandal. We are talking about the investigation of Radio Liberty’s “Schemes” program, according to which journalists found out that the people’s deputy uses power and tools in the interests of private business, the attitude towards which he never concealed and on behalf of which he publicly spoke for years. This concerns promoting the interests of Autoenterprise, a group of private companies involved in the import of electric cars from abroad and the manufacture and installation of charging stations for them. Kunitsky was so carried away by this that he wanted to install a charging station right in the courtyard of the Verkhovna Rada
According to the analysis of journalists, Kunitsky personally initiated two bills regarding the development of networks of electric charging stations, which, according to market experts, are an attempt to make it easier for Autoenterprise to do business.
The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption confirmed to Schemes that, regardless of the specific person of the deputy, his appeal in criminal proceedings, to which he may be related, is a violation of the anti-corruption law in terms of a conflict of interest. For this, a fine and entry into the Register of Corrupt Officials after a court decision is provided.
“NACP has a principled position that if the criminal proceedings somehow concern a people’s deputy and he tries to find out this or that information in the framework of the criminal proceedings by sending a deputy’s appeal, he acts in a conflict of interest,” the acting deputy said. Alexander Shulga, Head of the Department for Compliance with Legislation on Conflict of Interest and Restrictions on Corruption Prevention of the NACP.
“Together with all the facts, this is most likely an abuse of the power of a people’s deputy. This is a criminal article, a corruption criminal offense, in this case it is the jurisdiction of NABU,” said Andrey Savin, a lawyer at the Anti-Corruption Center NGO.
The above facts took place in 2020. But nothing has changed in this story since then. Today, the attention of the specialized anti-corruption prosecutor’s office is riveted to Kunitsky’s colleague in parliament, Pavel Khalimon, because of possible illegal enrichment, maybe law enforcement officers should conduct a similar check against Kunitsky, because the law and responsibility should be the same for everyone.
Nikolay Tkachuk
