The “leaks” scandal caused a crisis in the body, which was closely patronized by our Western partners
By the end of September 2024, Ukraine must conduct an independent audit of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Kyiv made this commitment to the International Monetary Fund. The director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, Semyon Krivonos, announced back in February that an audit would be carried out by independent experts appointed by international partners. But now, it seems, he would be happy to postpone this test until better times...
In fact, over the 10 years of its operation, NABU has been involved in several scandals. But despite everything, the Bureau continued to be considered a body that is beyond any influence: even during the open conflict of the first director of the Bureau Artem Sytnik with the first head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office Nazar Kholodnitsky, and even after Sytnyk ended up on the register of corrupt officials... Public activists despite all of this stood behind the NABU mountain. It is significant that after his dismissal from NABU, Sytnyk remained involved in government affairs - first he went to work as deputy director of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, and now he has taken a similar position in the Defense Procurement Agency of the Ministry of Defense. And this also caused great delight among the anti-corruption community.
But past incidents with Sytnik now seem trivial compared to the scandal in which the Bureau’s current top officials are embroiled. The latest story seems to have worse consequences for the NABU leadership than for their predecessors. The story of the “leaks” of information from the Bureau has already caused a serious crisis in this body and has quarreled the director of this body, Semyon Krivonos, with anti-corruption activists who previously advocated for the Bureau, and with people’s deputies.
Shower of “plums”
The scandal began on May 22, when the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, together with the National Police, conducted searches at one of the Bureau's detectives, and a few days later, the head of NABU Krivonos removed his first deputy Gizo Uglava from his duties at his own request. The wording is “to ensure an objective pre-trial investigation launched into a possible information leak.” There is a suspicion that it was the NABU veteran Uglava (perhaps the only representative of the “Georgian reformers” who has still remained in Ukraine since 2014) for a long time who transmitted information from the bowels of the Bureau to outsiders. This turned out to be somewhat accidental: after many attempts, we managed to “decode” an iPhone seized back in 2023 from the former secret curator of the “Big Construction” project, the odious Yuri Golik.
The case, which involved Golik and the ex-governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region Valentin Reznichenko, concerned a tender for UAH 1.5 billion for road repairs in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where NABU suspected damage to the state amounting to UAH 300 million. Despite the serious digital security measures that Golik used, detectives managed to dig out from the gadget traces of Golik’s correspondence with Presidential Office adviser Georgy Birkadze and an anonymous top from NABU. Now all paths lead to the detached Uhlava.
The Verkhovna Rada closely followed these high-profile events and finally decided to find out the details first-hand. The Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy, led by Anastasia Radina, summoned the head of NABU to communicate. But Krivonos refused at the last moment, citing the fact that the pre-trial investigation he initiated was ongoing, the intermediate and final results of which were incorrect to discuss without the head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office. Although NABU previously assured that their Internal Control Department has enough resources to independently conduct a pre-trial investigation into a possible information leak. Krivonos also answered the deputies that he would not like to “concentrate efforts on the political process.”
Such a sharp change in the plans of the head of NABU suspiciously coincided with the publication right before the meeting of the journalistic investigation committee regarding the direct participation of Krivonos himself in the “leaks”. It followed from the investigation that he allegedly shared information with the head of NJSC Naftogaz, Alexey Chernyshev, which is why searches in Chernyshev’s house were disrupted in another case concerning the possible receipt of unlawful benefits. Radina found the only explanation for Krivonos’s ignoring the committee’s invitation to be precisely these new circumstances.
At the same time, the director of NABU became involved in a dispute with anti-corruption activists led by the head of the Anti-Corruption Center Vitaly Shabunin. They began to categorically demand that Krivonos immediately resign from Uglava, without waiting for the completion of the pre-trial investigation, which could last for years. Krivonos, in turn, complained that he was the victim of a discrediting campaign and accused Shabunin of a “witch hunt.” However, he quickly realized that in verbal competitions on this field his chances were illusory, and after the publication of his “vicious connections” with Chernyshov, he fell silent.
Waiting for the auditors
The Bureau, which has always been the absolute favorite and leader in the trust of the West and Ukrainian social activists, has never faced a crisis of this level. How this problem will be solved is still completely unclear. If Sytnik was treated very loyally in Western embassies and among anti-corruption grant organizations, then the current director of NABU, despite his first successes with the case of the ex-head of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Knyazev, should no longer expect such support. He can now be reminded of all the suspicions about connections with the Office of the President that were raised when he won the competition with surprising ease.
“The NABU Institute dealt with a problem: an ordinary detective who saw a leak on the part of the first deputy director, as he should have done, informed the director and internal security about this,” says the head of the Anti-Corruption Center Vitaly Shabunin, “And now I have The key question for them is: can they do their job? If they cope and Uglava is fired, then the institution has succeeded.”
Shabunin, giving such an ultimatum, is confident that an independent audit, which will take place in the near future, is unlikely to be able to turn a blind eye to this story. Therefore, in his opinion, the director of NABU should be interested in resolving it as quickly as possible, so as not to receive a disappointing verdict.
“Unfortunately, there is already distrust in the institution,” states People’s Deputy Anastasia Radina. “NABU has not responded to questions about an internal investigation, dismissals, or internal administrative measures that would make it impossible for such a situation to repeat itself. Of course, in this situation there is a crisis of confidence, and NABU, let’s be honest, is the last body that can afford this.”
Radina says that the parliamentary anti-corruption committee is now exchanging letters with NABU about holding its on-site meeting directly at the Bureau: “There are two parallel processes going on now. There is a criminal case that can be investigated for a certain period of time. If I’m not mistaken, the average time between the start of the investigation and the verdict in the second instance in NABU cases is 5-7 years. We don’t want to wait that long; accordingly, NABU has launched an internal investigation, the results of which may result in the dismissal of those who committed violations. According to the law, the internal investigation must last two months. If these investigations began immediately after the information was made public, they should end soon. Therefore, it will not be possible to simply sit out, because there are clear deadlines.”
Radina really hopes for the NABU audit, the results of which will give us an answer to the question: was the work of the Bureau and its head effective? The commission consists of three independent experts with international experience. If the audit conclusion is negative, this is grounds for the Cabinet of Ministers to dismiss the NABU director early. The possibility of terminating his powers by government decision was enshrined in a law adopted in 2021.
A separate intrigue is how the Office of the President will behave, with whose adviser (Birkadze) Uglava allegedly communicated. Permission for the potential dismissal of the head of NABU by the Cabinet of Ministers can only come from Bankova. Activists fear that the Office will be quite happy with the current suspended situation, when the work of one of the most annoying bodies for the authorities has already been significantly discredited, and trust in its leadership has been undermined.
Another thing is that Western partners, for whom NABU is the cornerstone of the anti-corruption architecture, may not allow the structure to be paralyzed so easily. And there have been attempts by the authorities to neutralize the Bureau before - it’s worth recalling at least the conclusion of the Constitutional Court in 2020 on the proposal of a group of people’s deputies about the unconstitutionality of the appointment of Sytnyk as director of NABU. True, then this did not lead to changes in his status.
Exchange of “hairpins”
If Bankovaya, after the scandal, indirectly takes the side of the Bureau’s management, this may provoke another stage of mutual accusations between the authorities and the anti-corruption community. The public exchange of “pins” has already provoked a message from the head of the Presidential Office, Andrei Yermak. The de facto second-in-command in the state was outraged that the fight against corruption was being replaced by manipulation. Ermak accused “some people” of deliberately scaling up the problem, otherwise the meaning of their work would be lost. The head of the Office concluded that “these people” are helping Russians spin the narrative about Ukraine as “the most corrupt state.”
It is significant that Ermak’s post appeared immediately after the publication of a publication in Politico about the persecution and pressure of the Ukrainian authorities on investigative journalists and public activists. And despite the fact that the head of the Office did not name specific names or organizations to which he had complaints, anti-corruption activists immediately took his words personally.
Obviously, the intrigues around the future of NABU will only add new colors to this battle: there is room here for possible accusations of the authorities in the collapse of anti-corruption structures and covering up for their protégés, and for nervous reactions in the style of “don’t rock the boat.” But the authorities, in response to all the loud reproaches regarding tolerance for corruption, can always pull out a reinforced concrete argument from their pocket: all the audits conducted by the Americans on the use of their assistance have not yet revealed any blatant violations. Although, it would seem, who should worry more about the integrity of funds than those who directly give them?
