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150 people dismissed from prosecution agencies in Ukraine under lustration law

By the end of March, 300 more people are to be dismissed, aide to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General says

KIEV, January 21. /TASS/. As many as 150 people have been fired from Ukraine’s prosecution agencies under the lustration law, aide to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Valeriy Karpuntsov said on Wednesday.

“By today, about 150 people have been dismissed from prosecution agencies under the law on purification of government bodies. By the end of March, 300 more people are to be dismissed,” he told the Ukrainian Public Television.

He said that the law was first of all applicable to those prosecutors who had dealt with cases against Maidan (the Independence Square in central Kiev, which has become a symbol of mass protests) activists.

Lustration law in Ukraine

On September 16, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a law on lustration, or purification of the government bodies of political opponents. The law requires special scrutiny of “persons empowered to perform state or local self-government functions,” including the president, parliamentary speaker, prime minister, deputy prime ministers, chief of national security service, national bank, all people’s deputies, and also military, judges and members of the Central Election Commission. Lustration procedures will be applicable to all candidates for such positions, too.

A group of persons will never be unable to get such clearance. It includes those who on February 25, 2010 through February 22, 2014 held the posts of the president, prime minister, first deputy prime minister, government minister, national bank, security service, Kiev’s prosecutor or regional prosecutor.

The same restriction applies to all senior officials who were taking their posts between February 25, 2010 and February 22, 2014, in other words, during the Viktor Yanukovych presidency, law enforcers, civil servants and local self-government officials who caused harm to the life, health or property of Euromaidan activists, as well as those who before August 19, 1991 took commanding positions in the Soviet Communist Party or the Young Communist League, political commissars of the Soviet Armed Forces and the Soviet Interior Ministry, former secret service officials and persons “involved in the political persecution of Ukrainian national-liberation movement during World War II or post-war years.”