The director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Semen Kryvonos, has dismissed his first deputy, Gizo Uglava, due to disciplinary action. The relevant message was published on the NABU website.
Uglava violated the Oath of Office of a civil servant, the rules of ethical behaviour for civil servants, the Law on Civil Service and the Code of Ethics for NABU employees. According to the Bureau, he "committed a number of actions and statements of a negative nature aimed at personal and professional discrediting of the bureau employee who submitted a memo on possible facts of information leakage".
"In addition, these actions have formed an understanding among NABU employees of the possibility of negative consequences for whistleblowing, which is an unacceptable violation of the highest standards of ethics and integrity that should guide the work of NABU employees and senior management," the statement added.
Gizo Uglava and the context of his dismissal
In May, Uglava was suspended from his duties in connection with the investigation into the alleged leakage of information from NABU in the case of Big Construction and Yuriy Holyk.
Gizo Uglava worked in the Georgian prosecutor's office from 1998 until 2012. In 2015, he became a Ukrainian citizen and in the same year became the first deputy director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, a new anti-corruption body for Ukraine. In April 2022, he began acting as the NABU's director, as there was no full-time director. In March 2023, Semen Kryvonos became the director.
In 2017, the Prosecutor General's Office opened a case against Uglava. They were checking whether he had Georgian citizenship at the time he took up a public office in Ukraine. At the time, the NABU called the proceedings a form of pressure on the Bureau. The Bureau said that Uglava had automatically lost his Georgian citizenship when he received Ukrainian citizenship.
In addition, the PGO was investigating tax evasion. The Bureau also called this accusation groundless and said that the prosecutor's office was investigating the tax evasion "in advance".