Ukraine’s prosecutor general accuses anti-corruption chief of falsifying documents and stealing case files. ‘He’s lost his mind,’ sources in Zelensky’s circle say.
Ruslan Kravchenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, who resigned last week, has issued a notice of suspicion to National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Director Semen Kryvonos and called on him to step down.
In a video address, Kravchenko said NABU and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) employees illegally seized case materials during searches conducted as part of the “Carthage” operation: materials from criminal cases against staff members of those same agencies that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine is handling.
“The so-called ‘Carthage’ operation wasn’t aimed only at me. Its true goal was to gain access to case materials in criminal proceedings against NABU and SAPO leaders and staff, and then to remove the prosecutor general and suspend procedural decisions on those cases,” the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda quoted Kravchenko as saying.
In early September, NABU and SAPO announced they were conducting a “special operation to expose a criminal organization led by an official from the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
The anti-corruption agencies said the case involved “providing protection for a network of fraudulent call centers and legalizing assets,” and searched the Prosecutor General’s Office as part of the operation.
Kravchenko denied the accusations and resigned.
Kravchenko said the Prosecutor General’s Office is providing procedural oversight in dozens of serious and especially serious criminal cases against NABU and SAPO leaders and employees, and that some case materials were illegally copied or stolen during the searches.
Kravchenko said NABU’s director himself is suspected of “forging official documents to obtain an unlawful benefit on a large scale,” as well as “the sham adoption of a child in order to create grounds for evading liability in court.”
Kravchenko also said he had issued a notice of suspicion to a person close to SAPO Head Oleksandr Klymenko, whom he did not name. The case involves influencing judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC), offering them unlawful benefits, and helping the person evade mobilization, the Ukrainian news outlet RBC Ukraine reported. Kravchenko said the criminal case against that person was the real reason behind the search of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Kravchenko, who resigned September 8, reiterated that the decision was “a deliberate political decision that is not an admission of any guilt, the result of any agreement, or a rejection of his continued fight for his reputation and integrity.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, responding to Kravchenko’s video address, wrote on the morning of September 14: “This prosecutor general has only one path: 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.” Zelensky called on the Verkhovna Rada to accept Kravchenko’s resignation as soon as possible.
Sources close to Zelensky told RBC Ukraine that Kravchenko acted without coordinating with the Ukrainian president’s office. “He’s lost his mind. Maybe he got scared,” one source told the outlet.
Kravchenko is currently outside Ukraine. A source told Ukrainska Pravda that the prosecutor general left the country by car overnight on September 14. Kravchenko insists he is “on an official trip abroad.” During the trip, he said, he plans to “inform international partners about the real state of affairs in the anti-corruption system, the signs that these agencies are concentrating uncontrolled influence, and the risks these practices pose to state sovereignty, the rule of law, and Ukraine’s democratic institutions.”
In a joint statement, NABU and SAPO said that they did not seize any criminal case materials during the search of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. “This attack did not begin today. Its active phase began last summer, and one of its main goals was an attempt to subordinate NABU and SAPO to the Prosecutor General’s Office,” the statement said.
NABU and SAPO added that, as of the morning of September 14, Semen Kryvonos had not been formally named as a suspect.
Davyd Arakhamia, head of the parliamentary faction of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, said the Verkhovna Rada would vote on September 15 on Kravchenko’s dismissal as prosecutor general.
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