Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko has signed a notice of suspicion against Semen Kryvonos, the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), and issued a video address in which he accuses the country’s anti-corruption bodies of “especially grave crimes.” Ukrainska Pravda reported that Kravchenko left the country in an official car in the early morning hours of Sept. 14. In early September, officials from NABU and Ukraine’s Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) searched the prosecutor general’s premises, after which he submitted his resignation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the Verkhovna Rada to remove Kravchenko from office as soon as possible.
In his video message, Kravchenko addressed the NABU/SAPO investigation that led to the searches at his office, alleging that its real aim was to seize evidence that the prosecutor general had gathered against the country’s anti-corruption bodies:
“Its real goal was to gain access to the materials of criminal proceedings against the leadership and staff of NABU and SAPO. And after that — to remove the prosecutor general and halt procedural decisions in these cases.
Right now, the Prosecutor General’s Office is providing procedural oversight in dozens of criminal proceedings investigating grave and especially grave crimes committed by NABU and SAPO staff. Based on the evidence gathered, I signed a notice of suspicion for NABU Director Semen Kryvonos.”
The prosecutor general claims Kryvonos is guilty of “forging official documents to obtain an especially large unlawful benefit” and of a “sham adoption of a child intended to create grounds for evading liability in court.” Kravchenko said NABU and SAPO had gained access to legally protected case materials and had copied and stolen some of the documents.
NABU and SAPO noted that no one had officially served the suspicion notice against Kryvonos and called Kravchenko’s statements “a continuation of the systemic attack on independent anti-corruption bodies.”
In his address, Kravchenko also said that Zelensky had “politically held him back” from making a decision on Kryvonos, and that NABU representatives had offered him a deal: drop the charges against the bureau’s director in exchange for guarantees of immunity.
Zelensky responded to these remarks on his Telegram channel:
“This prosecutor general has only one way out: dismissal from office. That’s exactly what I told him. Ukraine has seen all the reasons. If he considers this political pressure, let him call it that. I ask members of parliament to support this dismissal without delay.”
On Sept. 4, Ukrainska Pravda reported on the searches by NABU and SAPO at the Prosecutor General’s Office, as well as at the offices of his deputy Mariia Vdovychenko and of Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration. The next day, NABU and SAPO confirmed the searches. The anti-corruption authorities detained Serhiy Kropyva, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s International Legal Cooperation Department, announcing the exposure of a criminal organization headed by a high-profile Prosecutor General’s Office representative. Amid the scandal, Kravchenko filed a letter of resignation on Sept. 7.
Ukrainska Pravda established that overnight into Sept. 14, Kravchenko left Ukraine in an official car. He later confirmed his departure, insisting that he was on a “foreign business trip,” during which he intended to “inform international partners about the real state of affairs in the anti-corruption system, signs that it is concentrating uncontrolled influence, and the risks that such practices pose to state sovereignty, the rule of law, and Ukraine’s democratic institutions.”
David Arakhamia, head of Zelensky’s Servant of the People parliamentary faction, announced that the Rada will vote on the Prosecutor General’s dismissal on Sept. 15.
