Ukrainian watchdogs fume that president’s proposal to put wartime corruption on par with treason will give more power to state security service.

By equating corruption to treason, Zelenskyy’s office is manipulating the public’s desire for justice, said Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (Antac), a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization that monitors graft. In reality, Shabunin added, Zelenskyy’s office is pursuing other goals: to protect high-level officials from corruption charges and obtain tools to destroy opponents.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•1 year ago

    Ok, since the title and summary really don’t explain at all what the problem is, I think those two paragraphs are much better:

    Two senior officials following the proposal, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, say concerns are growing within Ukraine’s anti-graft agencies that Zelenskyy’s plan will take top corruption cases away from their oversight and pass them to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which falls under the president’s command.

    The SBU could, potentially, have the power to bury corruption cases involving top officials. The move, the officials say, could put Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure under threat, and anti-corruption watchdogs are sounding the alarm.

    But Politico, owned by very agenda-driven Axel Springer SE are hardly an unbiased an neutral news source these days.
    Some of what they write here is not very consistent:

    As journalists and anti-graft organs start to uncover more alleged corruption schemes during the first months of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion which began in February 2022, Zelenskyy thinks those days were so tough that officials should be cut some slack.

    “February and March 2022 — it was a fight for the existence of Ukraine. If I see the corruption cases dated that time, I demand solid evidence. If there is one [evidence], the guilty must be punished by court, not public opinion,” Zelenskyy said in a televised interview. “As for my idea of equating corruption to state treason during wartime, I think it will be a very serious instrument to make them not even think about it [corruption].”

    How does “I want solid evidence and then I want it to be counted as treason” equate to cutting someone some slack?