KIEV, September 25. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) chairman Oleksandr Turchynov on Thursday signed a law on lustration.

“By signing this law, I address the President of Ukraine to immediately sign it today. Tomorrow it can be published and it will come into effect,” Turchynov said.

Lustration bill

On September 16, the Ukrainian parliament adopted the so-called lustration bill. The act was approved by a 235-majority vote against the required minimum of 226 votes.

The act 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 participants, 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.”

Earlier, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said one million Ukrainian officials of various ranks, including the entire cabinet of ministers, would be lustrated.