Prosecutor General of Ukraine: all agents of Ukrainian Anti-Corruption bureau operate outside of law
Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, believes that all agents of the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) are conducting illegal acts, according to his statements on the TSN Tyzhden weekly news show.
“They are using illegal methods of provocation. None of them was sworn in to have access to state secrets, but they receive transcripts of wiretaps of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which is a crime. Moreover, they use surveillance equipment imported and not registered in Ukraine, which is contraband. Then they use materials received by means of this equipment in their work. It has all the makings of an illegal group acting through illegal ways and by means of illegal techniques. Now I understand the full scope of the problems of the NABU. All its agents are now beyond the law,” Prosecutor General Lutsenko said.
Then Lutsenko went on suggesting that the NABU should have hired its undercover agents through open contests.
“The law requires that all staff members are hired through an open process. But dozens of agents, including those two who had been caught [on tape] at a secret apartment had been assigned their duties in closed procedures, which contradicts the law,” the Prosecutor General said.
As it was earlier reported, the NABU had to call off all undercover operations it was conducting after an agent who worked as the First Deputy Chairperson of the State Migration Service, Dina Pimakhova, was busted.
One of the successful undercover operations conducted by the NABU agents, the results of which were revealed to the public after its completion, was known as "the amber case" against a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Boryslav Rozenblat. The evidence in the case was obtained by an NABU agent who had worked undercover posing as a representative of the Fujairah company based in the United Arab Emirates ostensibly interested in the extraction and export of amber in Zhytomyr oblast. She approached the MP asking him to help her receive a license for the use of natural resources and to push amendments to the Customs and Tax Codes of Ukraine to alter the legislation to benefit Fujairah and lower the company’s fee for amber extraction.
MP Rozenblat is now facing corruption charges worth USD 285,000.