Victor Shokin presenta una queixa a la Comissió Europea per acomiadament del 2016

Victor Shokin, the former Ukrainian Prosecutor General who played a prominent role in a number of scandals over the extent of the United States’ influence over domestic Ukrainian issues, has filed a complaint with the European Commission, asking that the institution recognize that his rights were violated when he was fired in March 2016 after less than 14 months in post.

The submission is Shokin’s latest attempt to secure justice for what he sees as his unlawful 2016 dismissal by then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. After exhausting all available legal mechanisms in Ukraine, Shokin filed a complaint against Kyiv with the European Court of Human Rights in 2017, a case which is still ongoing. In this most recent attempt to seek redress, Shokin argues that his dismissal violated a number of his rights, including his right to work and his right to a fair trial, and that the case violated Ukraine’s right to self-determination as well.

The application, sent to Commissioner European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union, Mairead McGuinness, is certain to draw renewed attention to a saga which played a significant role in former US President Donald Trump’s first impeachment and at times threatened to derail the 2020 presidential election in the United States. While much of the circumstances surrounding Shokin’s dismissal are shrouded in controversy, one central element is unquestioned by all sides—US President Joe Biden, then the vice president under the Obama administration, encouraged Poroshenko to fire Shokin, including by suggesting that dismissing the top prosecutor could unlock $1 billion in financial assistance from Washington.

US officials have argued that they were dissatisfied with Shokin’s progress cracking down on corruption and pointed out that other countries and international bodies, including the EU, had also advocated for Shokin’s sacking. Shokin, on the other hand, maintains that he was forced to resign after he started investigating the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter was a member of the board of directors until 2019.

However, Shokin’s recent application to the European Commission focuses less on his theories about why he was fired and more on his belief that US officials’ call for his dismissal constituted “interference in internal affairs of Ukraine by a foreign state”. European officials’ first task will undoubtedly be to determine whether the European Commission has the jurisdiction to hear Shokin’s appeal, as the former prosecutor believes they do under the Association Agreement which Ukraine and the EU ratified in 2014.

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