Civil society demands Yakubovskyi to be dismissed from the position of deputy Prosecutor General

President of Ukraine 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

Prosecutor General  

Iryna Venediktova 

On September, 10, 2020 the official website of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine informed of having appointed Maksym Yakubovskyi to the position of Deputy Prosecutor General. Meanwhile, it was revealed in the media that he was presented to the prosecutors as the Deputy Prosecutor General who will supervise the department of investigating crimes during the Revolution of Dignity, investigation of cases of torture department and military crimes department.  

From the publicly available information it is known that between 2011 and 2013 Maksym Yakubovskyi worked as an expert on criminal law at the “Independent Ukrainian Center of Legal Initiatives and Expertise “Legal State”. This structure is directly related to Viktor Medvedchuk and his political party “Ukrainian Choice”. For instance, the head of “Legal State” Vasyl Nimchenko also happens to be the co-founder of the “Ukrainian Choice – Right of the People” NGO alongside Viktor Medvedchuk. At the same time, it was the analytics of the “Legal State” that the Russian politicians actively used in their attempts to discredit the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Meanwhile, media elaborately covered the activity of Mr. Yakubovskyi as integral part of the PR-campaign of Medvedchuk’s party “Ukrainian Choice”.   

We, the victims from the criminal cases of Revolution of Dignity, their lawyers, representative of human rights organizations and other civil society organizations, are concerned with such an appointment and believe that it will cancel out the independence of the prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office in their roles of processual supervisors of the cases of Revolution of Dignity. This appointment will also disable the possibility to effectively finish the investigation of these cases and to properly present the accusation in court. It also discredits Prosecutor General’s Office and country’s leadership – both in the eyes of Ukrainians and in the eyes of the international community.  

We remind that on August, 7, 2020 tens of human rights organizations and other civil society organizations addressed the President and pointed to how appointment of Oleh Tatarov, the former Deputy Head of the Chief Investigative Department of the Ministry of Interior, to the office of Deputy Head of Office of President of Ukraine is unacceptable. We are convinced that individuals, who discredited themselves during the Revolution of Dignity and while holding top positions in law enforcement were directly or indirectly involved in mass-scale human rights violations, cannot be appointed to top positions in the government, in particular to positions that allow to shape law enforcement policy and to reform the law enforcement system. However, no answer to that statement was ever received. Instead, the attack on the pro-European direction of development of Ukraine, as a country with rule law and priority of human rights protection continues. 

Considering the above mentioned, we call on: 

– Iryna Venediktova: to dismiss Maksym Yakubovskyi from the position of Deputy Prosecutor General and to ensure the independence of prosecutors in the department of organization, of the processual supervision of the pretrial investigation and of the support of the public accusation in the criminal cases on the crimes, conducted during mass protests in 2013-2014;  

– Volodymyr Zelenskyy: to dismiss Oleh Tatarov from the position of Deputy Head of The Office of the President of Ukraine and in the future not to allow for appointment of individuals who justified and covered mass crimes and human rights violations and who themselves epitomize the Yanukovych regime as they were holding important positions in law enforcement back then to any important political positions.    

NGO “Family of Heroes of Heavenly Hundred” 

Advocacy Advisory Panel  

Human Rights Center DIYA  

Center for Development and Democracy 

AutoMidan NGO 

Center for Civil Liberties 

Anti-Corruption Action Center

NGO Save Protasiv Yar 

NGO Opir.org 

Vostok SOS 

NGO Human rights Initiative 

Agency for Legislative Initiatives 

Ukrainian school of political studies 

Media Initiative Group for Human Rights 

Transparency International Ukraine 

Capitulation Resistance Movement 

Media project Watchers 

Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center NGO 

National Interests Advocacy Network ANTS  

DEJURE Foundation 

Open Dialogue Foundation