Between 2014 and 2019, the Prosecutor General's Office carried out repressive actions in the interests of the highest authorities of Ukraine – former prosecutor Dmytro Sus

Dmytro Sus

Ukraine, due to Russia’s full-scale invasion, has been on the front pages of the world’s leading media for a year and a half. Western partners provide the country with military, material, and financial assistance worth tens of billions of dollars. Despite the war, the Ukrainian government declares its intention to join the European Union. However, one of the main conditions for the country’s acceptance into the European community is to overcome corruption. This includes corruption in government, judicial and law enforcement agencies.

In their investigations, journalists have repeatedly cited the facts of serious corruption in the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine and named entire departments that were created for “specific” tasks of the authorities. So we decided to talk about this with a person who knows better than anyone how and in whose interests criminal proceedings were handled by investigators of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine. This is Dmytro Sus, former deputy head of the Department, head of the Division for Investigation of Particularly Important Economic Cases.

Dmytro Sus was one of those Ukrainian law enforcement officers who was involved in almost all high-profile cases after the Revolution of Dignity that took place in Ukraine in early 2014.

Through his lawyer, we were able to talk to Sus, asking him questions about the most high-profile criminal cases that his department was handling.

Mr. Sus, you worked in the Economic Crimes Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office. The Ukrainian media claim that you worked under the watchful eye of people close to the former president, namely Oleksandr Granovsky. Why did it happen that the work of a state body was controlled by friends of President Poroshenko?

The department I worked in was supposed to be a powerful structural unit of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine. Before my appointment, I saw and understood that something could be changed in this country and that not everything was for sale. Indeed, the situation in the Prosecutor General’s Office was different from that in the regional centers and districts, and there were much fewer people who could interfere with the investigator’s activities. According to the Criminal Procedure Code, an investigator is a procedurally independent person, and for the most part, this was the case in the Prosecutor General’s Office. If someone prevented me from conducting a pre-trial investigation or interfered in the case, for example, in the case of the abduction of Oleh Seminsky, that person usually lost his position and, in some cases, his freedom (Seminsky was at that time the director of Ukraine’s largest private gas production company, Naftogazvydobuvannya LLC, now a member of the Ukrainian parliament, and owes his freedom to Dmytro Sus – ed.) As a result, in May 2015, I was able to find Seminsky after 3 years in captivity and subsequently release him. This and other equally high-profile cases that I completed were the basis for my appointment to a higher position – Head of the Investigation Division in the Department.

Volodymyr Hutsulyak was appointed Head of the Department. He got his ticket to the position thanks to his successful work in court to protect the interests of the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, namely the interests of the Roshen Corporation. Olga Varchenko was appointed head of the Prosecutors Division, and, as I found out later, she was close to Oleksandr Granovsky and, accordingly, his creation.

I can’t say that right from the moment the Department was created, it started investigating “paid-for cases”. You have to understand that there are so-called ” paid-for cases” in all bodies at all levels, from district to central office, and the lobbyists in such cases are also different. There are those who will negotiate directly with the perpetrators, and there are those who will visit the Prosecutor General with a bottle. As for the organization of work in the department itself, I can report that the lion’s share of cases was really high-profile and important for the further development of our country. I would like to emphasize our cooperation with the Embassies of the United Kingdom and the United States and other countries, and their invaluable assistance in our international cases.

However, there is no “barrel of honey” without a “spoonful of tar”. The fly in the ointment were the special assignments of our Department Head Volodymyr Hutsulyak. These special cases began to appear after Yuriy Lutsenko was appointed Prosecutor General. I do not exclude that by this time Hutsulyak was examining his subordinates, looking for task performers, and also wanted to curry favor with the newly appointed head, while retaining his lucrative position. It was too late for me to realize the reality, namely that Hutsulyak, both out of personal self-interest and on instructions from above, or at the request of friends backed by monetary rewards, often initiated criminal proceedings on request.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was a friend of President Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019), who pushed through his appointment to put pressure on his opponents. Photo by Dzerkalo Tyzhnia

The goal in such criminal proceedings was essentially the same – to get money. These were proceedings to redistribute business in his favor or in favor of the customer, for personal reasons, to force someone to pay for the closure of criminal proceedings, to remove a disobedient person from office, and so on.

As for Hranovskyi’s involvement in ordering certain cases, I can inform you that I have never personally met him in the Department. In the Prosecutor General’s Office, we crossed paths a few times, but we did not have any conversations. In one of the cases where I acted according to the law, and not as Lutsenko and Hutsulyak wanted me to, the latter actually called me to his office and scolded me for my actions because I did not bring him the $500,000 he was supposed to receive from Hranovsky for lifting the seizure of the property in court.

What are some examples of the most high-profile cases that, according to you, were initiated “on request”?

As I have repeatedly said, and in some cases testified under oath in court, first of all, this is the case of Pavlo Grechkivskyi, a member of the High Council of Justice. This is a purely paid-for case, and this is the first case where Hutsulyak directly said so, i.e. literally that this case is a paid-for case, we will receive money for it, justify the trust of the management, and we will also be able to make money from Grechkivsky himself, who needs to be “knocked down” from his position. As for other cases, we can mention certain episodes of the Naftogazvydobuvannya case, the case of MP Serhiy Rybalka, the case of former banker Oleksiy Omelianenko, the case of the mayor of Bucha, cases against judges, etc.

What was wrong with these cases?

You have to understand that there are no saints. They simply do not exist. Everything depends on the measure of this holiness. The only question for each person is their own moral code and the vector of their development. In each of the cases I mentioned, my investigators and I had to take the side of protecting the interests of certain categories of people, mostly public and famous.

In some cases, these people had some wishes for special humiliation of the client, for example, to slip a prostitute to a family man, to film everything with hidden cameras that we had to arrange in advance and then leak it in the news, or to come up with a bribe for officials and then publicize it. In some cases, we just had to make up a case out of nothing. In most cases, the “potentially ordered clients” were not a measure of honesty and I think they were no different from the customers, so I can’t say that there would be any “exaggeration” on the part of the investigation. However, even in these cases, when I told Hutsulyak that we could solve this or that situation, but it required a set of old and well-known investigative actions, as I said, there are no saints, a person would definitely get into something, but in all these cases I heard the same thing: “We were told to do this and that, and not a single step to the left or right.” After such a conversation, I usually removed myself from such a case and did not assign investigators to it, and later it was investigated mostly by procedural supervisors (prosecutors) who were influenced by Hutsulyak.

Can you tell us more about these cases? Let’s start with the mayor of Bucha (a suburb of the capital, a satellite city).

Mayor of Bucha Anatoliy Fedoruk. Photo by Unian

The case against the mayor of Bucha is very simple. (Anatoliy Fedoruk was accused of illegally transferring 68 hectares of forest land of the first category, worth more than UAH 100 million – about USD 2.707 million – ed.)

The head of the collegial body, which was the mayor, cannot be held criminally liable for decisions that are actually made by the deputies. The mayor’s role is to sign the decision. In turn, before voting, the deputies study the documentation that has already been approved by other officials and who have given their positive opinion. I tried to explain this to my idiot chiefs and said that the only thing we could easily charge Fedoruk with is official negligence (Article 367 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine), since he, as mayor and, roughly speaking, as the owner of the territory entrusted to him, should have known what was being done and what was growing where. And when considering the transfer of a land plot, he had to shout at the top of his voice to the deputies that “we cannot transfer this plot because I drove by there and saw a forest growing on it, so maybe there is a mistake in the documents, let’s look into this issue.” That’s all, I don’t understand what kind of intentional crime we can talk about in this situation. This is the same as bringing the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (the head of the Ukrainian parliament) to justice for passing a law that was voted for by the deputies.

What’s more, my superiors went even further in their stupidity and fear. In general, being afraid to say something that the boss doesn’t like or doesn’t agree with is our problem. At that time, Lutsenko was told by one of the current MPs that Fedoruk had illegally allocated either 600 or 900 hectares of land and that they should be arrested. He sent an order through Hutsulyak to me. Unlike what is happening now, and how for the most part everything is being done without objection by both the executors and the courts. At that time, during the pre-trial investigation, the investigators and I found out that the illegally allocated land was in the region of 20-30 hectares. We arrested them and it was indeed illegally allocated land. Yes, its area was smaller, but at least it was true. When Lutsenko found out that ten times less than he said to arrest was seized, he and Hutsulyak were really pissed off. To give you an idea, Bucha is about 20 square kilometers, so you have to understand that my superiors demanded that I and my guys arrest almost half of Bucha. I also asked them whether the people who live in this area and the organizations with buildings and rails should also be arrested and whether they wanted us to build a fence around this area. But Lutsenko and Hutsulyak did not care. These were the conditions we had to work in. Volodymyr Karpliuk (the mayor of Irpin), as far as my superiors knew, gave a bribe for not opening a similar case, and the same bribe was demanded from Fedoruk. I don’t know how this story ended, as I had already been transferred from the department. (Later, the Supreme Court sided with the Bucha community and rejected all the prosecutor’s accusations, thus recognizing that the case was falsified. Editor’s note).

What was wrong with the Naftogazvydobuvannya case?

One of the leaders of the state wanted to get a percentage of this company, which he believed was illegally deprived of him back in the late 90s. Then my subsequent superiors decided to “stick” to this case and make some money, both from the oligarchs, MPs and the victim. A real circus worthy of a Hollywood script.

I have been interviewed about this case many times, so the facts can be found on the Internet. After one of these interviews, my colleagues from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine took offense at me and came to search my house, seized my cryptographic flash drive with the Ethereum cryptocurrency, which, by the way, was never returned, a real “kindergarten” (smiles).

You also mentioned the case of banker Omelyanenko. Could you tell us more about it?

Oleksiy Omelyanenko. Photo by Liga.net

Oleksiy Omelianenko is a former member of the Supervisory Board of Ukrgasbank. Until 2010, it was not yet owned by the state, and interesting schemes were being run there, as in any financial institution. As far as I knew, there were several people who ordered this case. Vasyl Horbal, the majority owner of Ukrgasbank, who was also a member of the executive committee of the presidium of the Party of Regions of Ukraine, Kyrylo Shevchenko, the chairman of the board of Ukrgasbank from 2015 to 2020, and Omelyanenko’s partner in one development project.

I don’t know who crossed whom, but there was also a clear instruction to “work out” everything possible.

The first criminal proceedings against Ukrgasbank were initiated back in 2016. It concerned the theft of refinancing from the financial institution. To “tie” Omelianenko in this case, they needed testimony against him, and Horbal, the former majority owner of the bank, gave it, actually accusing Omelianenko of misappropriating UAH 100 million of the bank’s credit funds (the financial institution was nationalized in 2010 – ed.).

Vasyl Horbal personally came to see Hutsulyak and Varchenko and monitored the progress of the case.

If I’m not mistaken, there were even several criminal proceedings against Omelyanenko: embezzlement of bank property, creation of an organized criminal group, misappropriation or embezzlement of bank property, etc. A standard set of inept management. Why I say this is because the more fictitious criminal charges are imposed on a person, the easier it is for that person to defend himself.

During the investigation of these proceedings, Hutsuliak boasted to the head of the investigation and not only to him that Hranovskyi “shaved” (received) $4 million from a well-known developer for “pedaling” criminal proceedings against Omelianenko in the Department, part of which he received and was supposed to share with the participants in the investigation, so in this way he encouraged the investigation. The guys told me that for just one search or temporary access, I can’t say for sure now, he demanded and received $1 million. In this context, we feel sorry for the Prosecutor General’s wife, who, against the background of Hranovskyi’s enrichment, was only happy to receive gifts from the Chanel boutique from one of the customers of this case.

Omelyanenko was charged with a violation committed as a bank official. We had to actually “pull some facts out of the hat” because he had not been an official at the bank for 6 years at the time of the crime. The comical thing about the situation is that according to the documents provided by the bank, the funds he was accused of embezzling did not leave the bank at all, but were transferred from the borrower’s account to the bank’s income under a contract for the sale of claims under another loan. Later, due to the developer’s intervention, this agreement was declared invalid. The bank had to return these funds to repay the loan, which was ordered by the courts, but was not complied with by the bank. As the well-known joke goes: the spoons were found, but the sediment remained…

This is the kind of criminal proceedings that were conducted against Omelyanenko. The company that received the loan also stated these things. Then the employees of our Department forced its head, but he was reluctant at first, to testify against Omelianenko. In return, the company’s director was reclassified under an article of the Criminal Code, which was later decriminalized. This is an absolutely standard and working scheme, when we make one of them an “iron-clad” witness, and continue the investigation on the other.

There was also an episode in which Omelyanenko was accused of forcing a bank to rent a building that was allegedly unfit for use. Although it was a new building of almost 5000 m2 in the very center of the capital on Staronavodnytska Street. Interestingly, the bank is still operating there (smiles).

Why did the bankers and the developer need all this?

Follow the money trail and it will lead you to the truth.

As far as I heard from Hutsulyak, the former owner of Ukrgasbank, Vasyl Horbal, wanted to deflect suspicion of embezzlement and misappropriation of the bank’s funds by shifting the blame to Omelyanenko. In addition, some said that Horbal was trying to force him to pay off a lawsuit. However, Omelianenko did not recognize this dispute, which irritated Horbal.

As for the former chairman of the bank’s board, Kyrylo Shevchenko, he sought to demonstrate active involvement with the bank’s debtors and tried to divert attention from the fraud he himself had initiated at the bank, including payoffs for legal services, unjustified agency payments to individuals, and much more. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and other law enforcement agencies are now actively working on these facts. They have even served Shevchenko with a notice of suspicion and put the notorious banker on the wanted list. As the saying goes: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

You can find out more about all this from Volodymyr Hutsulyak, who is no longer constrained by corporate ethics, and I think he will be able to share what he has already told his subordinates and me.

Ukrainian anti-corruption journalists have repeatedly drawn attention to Volodymyr Hutsulyak’s corruption. Photo: Radio Liberty

As for the developer, as far as I know, he was supposed to pay Omelianenko $50 million for the project of an elite residential complex. But he decided not to do so, and through criminal proceedings he tried to force him to give up any claims. Once I heard that the investigator even received a command to come to the pre-trial detention center and give Omelyanenko “greetings” from the developer with a specific offer – to waive the demands for a refund in writing in exchange for his release and closure of the case.

So the three of them had a specific interest in putting Omelyanenko behind bars.

As you can see, there was some kind of financial interest everywhere.

In all these cases, prosecutors were digging like bulldozers – “I see the target, I see no obstacles”. That’s why they made a lot of procedural mistakes, for example, they didn’t properly serve Omelyanenko with procedural documents that were simply fabricated, suspicions, interrogation protocols, and so on.

They simply “turned a blind eye” to the court’s decision to refuse to extend the pre-trial investigation and continued to investigate it, and even after that, they singled out several episodes to circumvent the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine.

Of course, the prosecutors also failed to comply with the subsequent court decision to terminate the case against Omelyanenko by implementing Article 284 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, which provides for the closure of criminal proceedings. In other words, there are two court decisions issued in the name of Ukraine that make it impossible to investigate the case, and prosecutors are brazenly violating them, ignoring the law of Ukraine.

Here’s an example to give you an idea of how prosecutors and judges can distort or twist the law: with bail paid for Omelyanenko in the amount of UAH 7 million (USD 200,000), investigators go to court with a new request for arrest on a bail of UAH 39 million (USD 1,100,000), which is completely outside the law. And then – bingo! The judge of the Pechersk District Court ruled to remand Omelianenko in custody with an alternative bail of… 90!!! (two and a half times more) million UAH (USD 2,500,000)! This decision not only violates the law, but is beyond any common sense, not to mention any international legal norms.

As far as I know, Omelyanenko’s lawyers, seeing the lawlessness of the law enforcement and judicial systems, appealed to the European Court of Human Rights regarding all these violations that took place in his cases. And my colleagues realized that it could all end badly for them. After all, if the ECHR judgment is issued, law enforcement and judicial officials must be held accountable, up to and including criminal liability. However, when they tried to talk to their superiors about it, they got the same answer:  “The ECHR means at least 5 years of proceedings, and we need to decide now and immediately.”

By the way, as far as I know, Omelyanenko’s lawyers have already received a judgment in their favor from the ECHR, which lists all the violations of the prosecutors. And this is a precedent for Ukraine, because it is the first time that a judgment is issued in favor of a person against whom criminal proceedings are still ongoing, and not after an unjust verdict has been handed down.

And this is proof that the prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office have disgraced Ukraine all over the world.

Yes, what you have said is really impressive. Do you have anything else to add about the cases against Omelyanenko?

Ask him yourself. If he wants to, he will tell you the details. I’m sure there will be much more shocking information than what I know.

Let’s talk about Serhiy Rybalka.

Serhiy Rybalka. Photo by Unian

Much has been said and retold here, too. Rybalka was the son-in-law of Gennadiy Butkevych, co-owner of the ATB supermarket chain. Butkevych was close to the Prosecutor General at the time. On a particular day, Volodymyr Hutsulyak called me and Olga Varchenko and told us that the former Deputy Minister of the Interior was coming to visit us. And that he was coming from Yuriy Lutsenko from Riznytska Street on a special mission (Riznytska Street is the location of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine). It was Rybalka we were supposed to slip prostitutes to and do all sorts of nasty things, starting with illegal surveillance and without any restrictions. We were tasked with actually destroying his reputation and business, so that all his relatives and friends would turn away from him.

When I objected that this was complete “bullshit” and that I and my investigators would not do it personally, Hutsulyak told me to think about my future and emphasized that this was not a request, but a demand from the Prosecutor General. Also, as I understood it, the lion’s share of the work on Rybalka had already been done, because at this meeting I was handed a lot of files from e-mails, surveillance photos, traffic from mobile phone towers, as well as documents whose source was clearly illegal and which needed to be legalized. I kept some of these documents, and took pictures of others right at the table where they were telling me how to destroy Rybalka.

After one of these interviews about Rybalka, Hutsulyak appeared out of nowhere and told the press that I was allegedly offended by the prosecutor’s office for my dismissal and wanted to take revenge in this way. Based on his claims, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine even opened proceedings against me for this, as well as for the RAV4 car that I allegedly appropriated, although Hutsulyak received it partially as a bribe for his wife and then re-registered it for her. In any case, I gave the NABU detectives a copy of the documents on Rybalka, after which I did not hear from the detectives, let alone Hutsulyak and Lutsenko.

To summarize, I am glad that I did not participate in any of these cases and did not follow the illegal instructions of my superiors. Yes, I did not get rich, unlike them, and as a birthday present in 2016, for my principled and honest position, I received an order for my assassination from Vladimir Gutsulyak, who estimated the preparatory actions at $10,000. I thank the guys who recorded these idiots from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, who, out of a sense of impunity and inviolability, were ready to kill me because I was able to say “No” to them in the face. And after I disclosed their plans, they fabricated a proceeding in the NABU and organized my nationwide recognition through the media. Unfortunately, the criminal prosecution against me continues. So in early September, I received a “royal gift” from my enemies – the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court reduced my sentence from 9 to 7 years in prison. I would just like to remind you that I am charged with committing crimes under parts 3, 4, 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – misappropriation, embezzlement or seizure of property through abuse of office. Although they cannot find any real facts or evidence of my guilt.

Regarding all the paid-for cases that we have mentioned and those that we have not discussed, I am calm about the people against whom they are created. The main thing is to withstand the first blow, and then it gets easier. When a case is fabricated, sooner or later it starts to fall apart right in the hands of the investigator or prosecutor. When people are blinded by monetary rewards, or interested in career advancement as a reward, or when the case is politically motivated, law enforcement officers start making mistakes, first small ones and then bigger ones. Eventually, they begin to feel more and more relaxed and calm because they believe that local courts are in their pocket, and the offended person will receive the ECHR judgment at least in 5 years. Although this is certainly not always the case…

What exactly do you mean by “ordered your murder”? This information has not been published in the media before.

I mean murder, physical destruction. I don’t take the trash out of the house. At the same time, this information was known to the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the prosecutor in my case, as well as investigators of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine almost from the first day I learned about it.

You will appeal your sentence in the Supreme Court. How do you assess your chances?

I don’t comment on judges’ decisions in my case.

Do you intend to apply for the protection of your rights in the ECHR?

We will use all legal means to protect my rights.

There is an opinion that you are being persecuted for not agreeing to work for the corrupt law enforcement system. Why did you decide to give such a frank interview now?

Because my case is also fabricated. And I very much hope that if necessary, despite the decisions of the Ukrainian courts in my case, which are made under pressure from my enemies, I will be able to get a fair decision in the ECHR by drawing the attention of the European community.

How do you assess the activities of current law enforcement agencies, has anything changed in their work?

I can say that since the military aggression, I and my new friends have found cryptocurrency accounts of the aggressors, as well as people who support military actions on the territory of Ukraine with a total balance of more than USD 1 billion in various cryptocurrencies. I passed this information on to all law enforcement agencies of our country, as well as the President’s office. Also, unlike many, I proposed a real mechanism for collecting these funds to the budget of our country. In one case, my information was presented as their own achievement, and in another case, they said that “the state is great, but let’s work on getting these funds into our wallets.” Draw your own conclusions.

Instead of a conclusion

The schemes that operated in the Prosecutor General’s Office during the time of Dmytro Sus cannot but shock. In fact, they are juridically legalized organized criminal groups that operated under the roof of an agency whose task is to fight real crime. We sincerely hope that the new leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office will give an appropriate assessment of the actions of those who gave such instructions. And that this will happen under the presidency of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The reform of the law enforcement system will be completed soon, making it impossible to repeat such repressive schemes, and Ukraine will be able to join the European community without such shameful corruption practices.