Kostin’s freelance army: hundreds of prosecutors receive salaries without authority

21 August 13:11
ANALYSIS FROM Komersant ukrainskyi

The story of the reform of the prosecutor’s office dates back to 2014. After the Revolution of Dignity, the so-called “lustration” took place. And in 2019, the country began to change the rules for the certification of prosecutors. As a result, all these complex processes have led to the fact that a significant number of people who are considered to be “out of the state” work in the prosecution service. They receive salaries from the state budget, but are deprived of their powers and, consequently, of their functionality. The situation was investigated by Komersant ukrainskyi

The wave of lustration

The wave of lustration of prosecutors that began in 2014 has ended over the course of several years with a very significant number of those lustrated being able to be reinstated in their positions through the courts, receive compensation from the state, and some of them even won lawsuits against Ukraine in the ECHR. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine, meanwhile, has not yet issued its verdict on the Law on Lustration in terms of its compliance with the Constitution. If this had happened immediately after the adoption of the Law, its revision would not have resulted in hundreds of millions of losses of public funds.

Prosecutors who were lustrated illegally (as stated in court decisions in their favour) were reinstated in their positions during the work of the new Prosecutor General’s Office. But they were reinstated to the old Prosecutor General’s Office and its structural units.

Such “dual” prosecutor’s offices were formed as a result of the 2019 reform.

Reform from prosecutor’s office to the Office

In accordance with the law adopted at that time, from the beginning of 2020, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine was transformed into the Office of the Prosecutor General, regional prosecutor’s offices became regional prosecutor’s offices, and local prosecutor’s offices became district prosecutor’s offices. All their employees were subject to certification (exams in the form of testing, an IQ test and an interview). By 2021, more than 10,000 prosecutors had passed such an assessment, 8,300 of them successfully.

Since there were also many issues with the legal aspects of the test, those who disagreed with the results of the test or interviews again (as in the case of lustration) went to court. And a significant number of such prosecutors received decisions in their favour. And so they were reinstated in their positions, and again the state paid them compensation. And what is interesting. They were renewed in the same way as the illegally mirrored ones – in the old structure of the prosecutor’s office.

An army of freelancers

Finally, today hundreds, if not thousands, of prosecutors “work” in the prosecutor’s office without working. According to sources Komersant ukrainskyi, the number of employees of the central office of the Prosecutor General’s Office who are considered to be out of the state reaches almost 30% of the total number.

The situation in the regions is no better.

In particular, according to the Sila Pravdy Investigative Journalism Centre, at least two dozen prosecutors in Volyn Oblast have been successfully re-employed in the prosecutor’s office after being dismissed due to lustration, reorganisation and certification. And all of them received compensation ranging from several tens of thousands of hryvnias to 1.9 million hryvnias.

The Office of the Prosecutor General conceals the number of freelance prosecutors. They consider this information to be not public. In addition, no one from the Prosecutor General’s Office could clearly explain to the editorial board what exactly is meant by taking people out of the staff or reinstating those illegally dismissed exclusively to the parallel old body “General Prosecutor’s Office”, even on condition of anonymity.

See, Komersant ukrainskyi sent a request to the Prosecutor General’s Office to name the exact number of employees of the central office who are considered to be out of the staff and to indicate their salaries. The editorial board also asked for information about the powers of the freelancers. The PGO stated that they allegedly do not keep such reports.

“As of 01.08.2024, the registered number of employees in the Office of the Prosecutor General is 978 prosecutors, 655 civil servants, 79 employees performing service functions, and 222 workers. At the same time, we would like to inform you that the current departmental regulations and organisational and administrative acts of the Prosecutor General’s Office do not provide for separate accounting of employees who “work outside the state” and settlements of their remuneration. In addition, there is currently no possibility of automated selection of the requested information. Provision of the requested information requires additional substantive analysis of documents and calculations. In view of the above, it is not possible to provide the requested information in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On Access to Public Information”, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in its response.

As a reminder, according to Slidstvo. Info, the Prosecutor General’s Office paid almost UAH 20.5 million in compensation to its former employees in 2020 alone. This is a quarter more than in 2018 and 2019 combined.

Остафійчук Ярослав
Editor