Speaker Razumkov: Legislation needs to be amended to dismiss NABU director

"As of today, according to the effective legislation, there are no mechanisms to dismiss NABU director even after a decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. On the other hand, we understand that when this law was adopted... many experts said that the law contradicted the Constitution as the appointment is made through the presidential decree. Therefore it was necessary either to amend the Constitution or to give a different wording... Now it will be necessary to amend the legislation, to bring it in accordance with the decision of the Constitutional Court," Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Dmytro Razumkov said on the air of Ukraine 24 TV channel.

On September 16, the Grand Chamber of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared unconstitutional certain provisions of the Law of Ukraine "On the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine."

At the same time, the Constitutional Court closed the constitutional proceedings in the case over verifying the constitutionality of Paragraph 1 of Part 1 of Article 1 of the law defining NABU as a "state law enforcement body."

On August 28, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the presidential decree on appointment of Artem Sytnyk as the Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. A corresponding application was filed by 50 MPs.

The authors of the application emphasized that the Constitution does not stipulate the powers of the President to appoint the NABU director, so, in their opinion, the President went beyond his constitutional authority and violated Part 4 of Article 5 of the Constitution which prohibits usurpation of state power.

Sytnyk was appointed as the Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine by then-President Petro Poroshenko in April 2015.

ol