Viktor Shokin

Viktor Mykolayovych Shokin (Віктор Миколайович Шокін; born 4 November 1952) is a former Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

Shokin was born 4 November 1952 in Kyiv.

After graduating from the Kharkiv Law Institute (today Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University) in 1980, Shokin worked for the Prosecutor General Office as investigator until 2001.

In an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda he stated that he was forced to retire in 2001 after refusing to take on the case against Yulia Tymoshenko.

In 2012, the Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Pshonka began investigating Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings, over allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption during 2010–2012.

He was a controversial appointee due to his perceived role in blocking prosecutions against those accused of shooting demonstrators in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

As Prosecutor General, he was accused of blocking major cases against allies and influential figures and hindering the fight against corruption in Ukraine.

Having previously worked as an investigator for the Prosecutor General Office, he served as Prosecutor General for one year between 2015 and 2016.

Shokin was appointed Prosecutor General of Ukraine on 10 February 2015, replacing Vitaly Yarema.

In early April 2015, Shokin stated that the General Prosecutor Ukraine (GPU) files about criminal orders from former General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka had disappeared, along with Pshonka's secret casework and secret materials.

Shokin stated, "I will tell you more: not only criminal cases, but classified materials have disappeared - secret records, including those related to the orders of Victor Pshonka."

(Виктор Шокин: "Я вам больше скажу: пропали не только уголовные дела, но секретные материалы – секретное делопроизводство. В том числе, то, что касалось распоряжений Виктора Пшонки.").

Various street protests demanding Shokin's resignation were held.

On 2 November 2015, there was an assassination attempt against him when an unidentified sniper fired three shots into his office, but was foiled by the bulletproof glass window.

Through 2015 and early 2016, domestic and international pressure (including from the IMF, the EU, and the EBRD) built for Shokin to be removed from office.

The Obama administration withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees to pressure the Ukrainian government to remove Shokin from office.

In 2015, Shokin became the prosecutor general, inheriting the investigation.

The Obama administration and other governments and non-governmental organizations soon became concerned that Shokin was not adequately pursuing corruption in Ukraine, was protecting the political elite, and was regarded as "an obstacle to anti-corruption efforts".

Among other issues, he was slow-walking the investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma and, according to Zlochevsky's allies, using the threat of prosecution to try to solicit bribes from Mr. Zlochevsky and his team – to the extent that Obama officials were considering launching their own criminal investigation into the company for possible money laundering.

While visiting Kyiv in December 2015, then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden warned Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that, if he did not fire Shokin, the Obama administration was prepared to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.

Biden later said: "I looked at them and said, 'I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' [...] He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."

Whether or not Shokin's successor was "solid" was never confirmed.

Amid domestic and international pressure, he was removed from office by the Ukrainian Parliament in March 2016, a move welcomed by the European Union, the United States, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

Shokin's removal played a central role in the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory as it was falsely Multiple sources:

claimed that then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden extorted the Ukrainian government into firing Shokin to thwart an investigation into Burisma, a company tied to his son, Hunter Biden, but Obama administration officials, European diplomats, and anti-corruption advocates in Ukraine say Shokin was removed because he failed to pursue Ukrainian politicians for corruption, and that they intervened before Biden did.

On 16 February 2016, Shokin submitted a letter of resignation, although the next day an official of the prosecution office stated, "As far as I know he has taken a paid leave".

On 19 February 2016 presidential press secretary Sviatoslav Tsegolko wrote on Twitter that the presidential administration had received an official letter of resignation from Shokin.

On 16 March 2016 an official of the prosecution office stated that Shokin had resumed his work.

On the same day, his office carried out a raid against one of Ukraine's leading anti-corruption groups, the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), claiming that it had misappropriated aid money.

AntAC was a frequent critic of the Prosecutor General's Office under Shokin.

In one notorious case, two of Shokin's prosecutors were caught with stashes of diamonds, cash and valuables in their homes, likely indicating bribery.

Prosecutors from another department of Shokin's office were fired or reassigned when they attempted to bring a prosecution against the so-called "diamond prosecutors".

On 28 March, protesters called for Shokin's firing, after his office was authorized by a Kyiv court to investigate AntAC.

Shokin was formally dismissed in a parliamentary vote on 29 March 2016.

The European Union praised Shokin's dismissal due to a "lack of tangible results" of his office's investigations, and also because people in Shokin's office were themselves being investigated.

Following his dismissal Shokin went into retirement.

In response to a query from Ukrainian News Agency in late 2019, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) acknowledged that it is continuing to investigate the attempted assassination of Shokin.

On 27 February 2020, a court ruling forced investigators to open a probe on Joe Biden's pressure on Poroshenko to fire Shokin.

The investigation was closed in November 2020 after the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States.