David Sakvarelidze: there will be no imitation of the Prosecutor’s Office reform. We are launching the first stage of testing despite resistance of the system

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Kyiv, August 13, 2015. Competition for position of the heads of prosecutor’s offices on the local level begins in late August, as soon as members of the candidates testing competition committee are appointed and the Prosecutor General signs the relevant decree. However, imitation of the reform will not be tolerated, said Deputy Prosecutor General David Sakvarelidze at a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.

According to Sakvarelidze, the system resists, but the new team was prepared for it. “The guiding motive of the interested groups is to freeze this process by any means, eventually replacing it by good old pretense of competition and imitation of reform. So they are majorly interested in possibility to influence the results of newly developed four-stage testing system,” emphasized Sakvarelidze. Imitation of the Prosecutor’s Office reform will not be tolerated as it is the Ukrainian people who demand new prosecution system. “The reform has been initiated by the President and receives his extensive support,” specified the Deputy Prosecutor General.

Mr. Sakvarelidze stated that all the technical faults and controversial issues were removed even before the beginning of the contest. There are no critical problems with tests, at least not sufficient enough to raise a dust, said the Deputy Prosecutor General. Nevertheless, there are internal investigations launched regarding the issues that can be solved at a working session. “They compromise legitimacy of official financial aid from the international donors we were pursuing for the past four months, taking into consideration the reality. There are no funds in Ukrainian budget to conduct this competition,” said the Deputy Prosecutor General. He emphasized that the EU funding was received and not a single hryvnia from the state budget has been spent on the reform.

Sakvarelidze reminded that up till now there was not a single attempt to organize an open competition of such scale for public prosecution in Ukraine. Moreover, seven hundred office holders will be replaced all over Ukraine. The process has been organized to a high standard, with active participation of highly skilled specialists and foreign companies and Western partners’ support. “We did our best to prevent any top-level official from influencing the testing process and testing results in any way. We need to exclude any possibility of manipulation,” he explained.

At present about six thousand applications for the posts in prosecution system. “It means there will definitely be large entry with many competitors,” emphasized Sakvarelidze.