John Engstrom, a Metro Detroit resident and Wayne State University Law School graduate, spent years in Ukraine working for the Justice Department, trying to address corruption and help improve the justice system there.
He began his career with the government in 1989 when he became an assistant U.S. Attorney in Detroit. He later went overseas for the Justice Department. He left the Justice Department in about a year ago. He is currently doing some consulting for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The column is in response to Ukraine's corruption investigation into Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff.
John Engstrom
By John Engstrom
Before you think of abandoning or even criticizing Ukraine because of its current corruption scandal, note that Ukraine's independent anticorruption detectives and prosecutors are criminally investigating and exposing a $100 million dollar corruption scheme allegedly involving Ukrainian officials at the highest level of their government. (Read article)
Now ask yourself, would the current U.S. Department of Justice investigate similar allegations of corruption involving high-level members of the Trump administration, or the Trump family?
When it was revealed that "border czar" Tom Homan accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives, Attorney General Pamela Bondi's Justice Department turned a blind eye and shut down the investigation. Thus far she's responded with severe arrogance to attempts at oversight from Congress. If this DOJ cannot even investigate relatively simple and small corruption within its ranks, don't expect any investigations of grand corruption.
And here's the irony. For literally decades our DOJ assisted Ukrainian authorities in an effort to strengthen its criminal justice system and develop the legal tools and skills necessary to investigate high level corruption within its own government.
It's definitely true that Ukraine has a history of grand corruption. But now, amidst an existential war, Ukraine is fighting back with legal tools against the corruption within its own government. The corruption should be criticized, but the efforts to prosecute corrupt officials should also be applauded.
Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak (Official Ukraine photo)
Meanwhile, in the U.S., we regress. We've quickly abandoned any efforts to investigate ourselves. Our once-reasonably respected institutions -- our courts, the DOJ, the FBI -- are no longer viewed as models for fairness and justice in the U.S. or abroad. Of course those institutions were never perfect, but if you travel the world, as I have, you would see that they were always much better than most. Moreover, we were almost always striving to improve. That is, until now.
This is depressing, but not hopeless. There are recognized best practices for investigating and prosecuting corruption and related offenses. The sauce is not secret. There are also best practices for preventing corruption in the first place (i.e., fair election laws, campaign finance regulations, whistleblower laws, independent inspectors general).
While the U.S. may be ignoring many of these standards at this time, in three years this administration will expire. We will see what happens then. Will we accept the lowered bar of this administration as the new status quo, or will we use our power to raise the bar back up?
