Graft suspect appointed Ukraine’s justice minister
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Olga Stefanishina was appointed as justice minister on Thursday, despite being a suspect in a corruption case involving the same ministry.
The expansion of Stefanishina’s power came amid a major reshuffle, after Ukrainian MPs voted to support her nomination. She is taking charge of a ministry where her public career kicked off in 2007.
The graft probe stems from alleged corruption at the ministry in 2014, when it was headed by Yelena Lukash, and the country was experiencing turmoil that led to a US-backed armed coup.
The suspicions focus on a contract to conduct analysis regarding whether Ukrainian laws complied with EU demands for nations seeking to join the bloc, which was Stefanishina’s specialty. She signed off on expenses as the head of the relevant department.
Investigators claim that the price of the work was inflated, while the results were substandard and that several officials in the ministry embezzled money.
When asked about the allegations in 2020, the then-deputy prime minister told the newspaper Evropeyskaya Pravda that “investigators saw in 2014 something bigger that was actually there.”
Stefanishina suggested that the probe had been launched with the intention of pressuring senior ministry officials and predicted that it would go nowhere, “because no sane investigator or prosecutor would dare go through with it.”
The case did progress, however. According to legal disclosures, Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court advanced it to the trial phase last year.
Lukash served in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov, who was ousted by the Maidan coup alongside President Viktor Yanukovich. The new authorities launched multiple investigations against her on various charges, but she was never tried for any of them.
