As of the morning of 14 September, no formal notice of suspicion has been officially served on Semen Kryvonos, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. NABU’s press service said this in response to statements by Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko that he had signed a notice of suspicion for Kryvonos.
NABU and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) also commented on allegations that, during searches at the Prosecutor General’s Office, they seized criminal case files allegedly relating to their staff. They said they had not seized any criminal proceedings referred to in the Prosecutor General’s statements.
“All claims about NABU allegedly seizing such proceedings are untrue. Accordingly, the statements by the Prosecutor General, who recently resigned, are currently public in nature rather than procedural. We also emphasise that NABU and SAPO have never offered or demanded any ‘immunity’ for anyone — neither for their employees nor for other individuals,” the statement said.
NABU and SAPO view the Prosecutor General’s statements as a continuation of a systematic attack on the anti-corruption bodies, the active phase of which began last summer, when there were attempts to subordinate them to the Office of the Prosecutor General.
Context
This morning, Kravchenko published a seven-minute video address in which he accused NABU and SAPO of gaining access to materials relating to employees of these bodies. According to him, they allegedly obtained these materials during searches at the Prosecutor General’s Office in the ‘Carthage’ case, which concerns the exposure within the Prosecutor General’s Office of a criminal organisation that protected illegal call centres and laundered the money obtained from them.
The President promptly responded to Kravchenko’s statement and said there was only one path for him — dismissal. He urged the Verkhovna Rada to swiftly support the Prosecutor General’s resignation.
The main suspect in the case concerning the criminal organisation in the Prosecutor General’s Office is Serhii Kropyva, head of one of the departments. Kravchenko spoke with him on multiple occasions, according to the investigation materials.
After NABU published information about the exposure, Kravchenko told journalists he did not plan to resign. However, that same evening he met with the President, after which he submitted his resignation. The Verkhovna Rada must vote on it.