Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said that suspensions have taken place in the ‘Carthage’ case, both in the police and in other law enforcement agencies.
The head of government said this during the questions hour in the Verkhovna Rada.
“As for the police, two officers are being brought to criminal liability — the deputy head of the Strategic Investigations Department and an officer from the Kyiv Region main directorate. We suspended them even before the report aired,” Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi уточнив.
Procedural actions are under way.
Separately, Vyhivskyi commented on the risks associated with access to the ‘Safe City’ video surveillance system, which the suspects in the case had used.
At present, the National Police have access to more than 90,000 CCTV cameras. At the same time, according to the minister, this area is still not properly regulated, so it requires legislative changes.
The Interior Minister also noted that the National Police’s internal security unit is checking possible individuals involved in criminal activity. According to him, an ordinary internal inquiry is not enough to establish all the circumstances, so the checks are being carried out using permitted operational and investigative methods.
Vyhivskyi also said that the police are coordinating with NABU on work regarding all possible individuals involved. At present, the agencies are determining who will investigate individual episodes of the case.
Separately, the minister commented on threats recorded on NABU tapes — against Denys Bihus, Ihor Lachenkov, and serviceman Viktor Lakhno.
According to him, the police have been working to expose the leader of the criminal organisation since 2023. After the leadership of the Department for Combating Drug Crime changed, Vyhivskyi claims, the suspects offered substantial sums — from $200,000 to $500,000 — to remove or suspend the head of the unit.
In addition, the minister said that representatives of the drug business invested significant funds in information resources and enlisted the media to discredit the police. According to him, law enforcement officers were aware of such attempts at pressure but continued their work.
- Operation ‘Carthage’, which NABU and SAP announced on 5 September, focused on exposing a criminal organisation operating in the Prosecutor General’s Office that provided ‘services’ to cover up illegal concentrates in exchange for bribes. They are also suspected of laundering illegally acquired assets.
- This month, NABU and SAP reported exposing a second criminal organisation whose members included representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Police, and the Prosecutor General’s Office. They are suspected of links to the ‘KhimProm’ drug syndicate. Among those who have already been served with notices of suspicion in this episode, there are no Prosecutor General’s Office employees — they are still being identified.
- The suspects in the case also had access to the ‘Safe City’ system; according to investigators, they used camera footage and tracking for criminal actions.
- Police suspects include Volodymyr Tsenov (first deputy head of the National Police Strategic Investigations Department), who appeared on NABU recordings under the alias ‘Price’, and Oleksandr Demianchuk (deputy head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kyiv Region Main Directorate of the National Police, on the recordings — ‘Consultant’.
- Read details of the ‘Carthage’-2 case in LB.ua’s roundup.