On July 15, people's deputies from the anti-corruption committee held a visiting meeting of the committee at NABU.
This happened after the director of NABU, Semyon Krivonos, did not come to a parliamentary meeting of the committee a month earlier, where the situation with leaks of investigative materials from the bureau and abuse of official powers by certain individuals was supposed to be considered. In which Deputy Director Gizo Uglava may be involved.
This story began publicly almost 2 months ago.
On May 22, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the National Police conducted searches in the apartment of an employee of one of the NABU units. It was about secret department detective Valery Polyuga and leaks of materials in the case, in which the curator of “Big Construction” Yuri Golik was involved.
The phone was seized as part of the Reznichenko/Golik case about tenders won by Stroyinvest Engineering LLC for road repairs in the Dnipropetrovsk region worth more than UAH 1.5 billion.
As sources explained at that time, in open archives from Golik’s phone, detectives found photos that indicated that someone was leaking materials from investigative actions against him.
Almost simultaneously with this, information from the source appeared that none other than the long-term deputy director of NABU Gizo Uglava could be involved in the leak.
Such suspicions were suggested by screenshots of the correspondence of Georgy Birkadze, the former chairman of the Brovary district state administration, who sent Golik certain information regarding the investigation and mentioned some “zema”. Considering that Birkadze is Georgian, it was logical to assume that they were talking about Uglave.
On May 24, two days after the searches, Uglava was removed from his duties.
ZN.UA described in detail the story of the leaks to NABU, indicating that in the phone seized from Yuriy Golik, three people corresponded with each other starting in 2021.
One of these people was detective Polyuga, the second was Birkadze, but the third person involved in the correspondence was the mysterious “Japanese”. This is how this person is signed on the screenshots. According to an incomprehensible tradition, since the time of Poroshenko, politicians have called NABU employees “Japanese”.
“From the context of the correspondence, it is clear that this is a person who has complete information about all cases, supervised all divisions, and it was necessary to take permission from him to carry out actions and obtain resources for the investigation,” a ZN.UA source in the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office clarified.
At the beginning of June, an investigation was published by Bigus.Info about who could have leaked information to the curator of “Big Construction”. Investigative journalist Denis Bigus received photographs from Yuriy Golik’s phone and, based on them, suggested that Birkadze’s information could have been leaked by one of the high-ranking officials of NABU, possibly Uglav.
According to the journalist, the only inconsistency in this version is that Uglava never corresponds with long messages. He writes literally a couple of words, but here there were entire paragraphs. In addition, they are written very competently.
In a comment to Bigus, Birkadze himself “admitted” that he himself was engaged in “creativity” and rewrote such messages. Theoretically, he was in contact with the detective of the D-2 unit, which means he could receive information without Uglava.
However, this did not completely remove suspicion from the deputy director of NABU.
Moreover, in fact, they were only part of the accusations against him, which were voiced by the CPC in recent months, and then at a meeting of the parliamentary committee they were voiced as an unanswered question by Anastasia Radina. No answer, because the director of NABU did not come to the committee then.
What was the essence of the CPC’s claims against Uglava? In fact, there is an excessive concentration of power.
The fact is that after the dismissal of the former head of the Main Detective Division Andrei Kaluzhinsky from NABU, the bureau began reform. As a result, “they decided to create four new ones from the Main Detective Division; competitions for the positions of their leaders are still ongoing. But they all must obey the Headquarters. Without an intermediate link, there is a single leader (the head of the State Traffic Police), who must be a detective and, according to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), the head of the pre-trial investigation body.”
Whereas neither Krivonos nor Uglava have such powers by law. In addition, this broke the concept of independence of detectives from the administrative leadership of the bureau, which in fact was one of the pillars of the independence and effectiveness of this body.
Whereas administrative management should not have access to the case materials at all.
In fact, the author of the material, Elena Shcherban, warned that such an accumulation of investigative materials by the NABU leadership could lead to unwanted leaks of materials. As an example, she cited the publication of a list of judges from searches in the office of Vsevolod Knyazev, as well as the fact that the Cabinet of Ministers, by some miracle, fired the leadership of the State Special Communications Service just a few hours before they were handed over the NABU suspicion of misappropriation of more than 62 million UAH.
Other criticisms of too much power in the hands of the Uglava were that it is the first deputy director who heads the competition commission, on which the career advancement of detectives depends, and the disciplinary commission, which is responsible for punishing them in case of violations.
Plus, the resource of operational and technical management was concentrated in the hands of the Uglava, that is, it could influence the processes of covert investigative measures.
At the same time, Elena Shcherban drew attention to the fact that the positions of deputy director of NABU are the only ones for which there is no open competitive selection. And the same Uglava has been in his position for 10 years, which, in principle, allowed him to accumulate unlimited power.
After information appeared about Uglava’s possible involvement in the leaking of investigative materials to Golik, the CPC demanded that NABU Director Semyon Krivonos conduct an official investigation. Instead, Krivonos said that the materials provided to him became the basis for a pre-trial investigation.
Over these months, the CPC has repeatedly made statements that the NABU director is actually sabotaging the dismissal of his deputy.
And in fact, Krivonos should have given answers to the voiced claims at a meeting of the parliamentary committee a month ago. But just the day before, a story by UP journalist Mikhail Tkach came out that the director of NABU himself could have blocked certain investigative actions against the head of Naftogaz, Alexei Chernyshev.
Krivonos did not come to the committee then. Referring to the fact that he cannot disclose the investigation materials.
Therefore, already on July 15, the deputies themselves came to NABU.
Answering a question from the head of the anti-corruption committee, Anastasia Radina, Krivonos explained why there is no official investigation into the Code and the leak of information.
According to him, the investigation of information leakage under jurisdiction does not fall within the powers of the Internal Control Department.
“The Internal Control Department, having received these materials and understanding the importance of this information, began information and analytical work. Based on the results of which, work was initiated with the head of SAPO, where we discussed, among other things, the assignment of an investigation to the Department of Internal Control, the issue of jurisdiction, the possibility of joint investigative actions with the unit that carried out the investigation in the proceedings (on Golik/Reznichenko) where the leak occurred.” ,” Krivonos explained to the deputies.
As a result, it was decided that the investigation would be handled by the Internal Control Department and on May 10, a corresponding entry was made in the register of pre-trial investigations.
“As for the internal investigation, I explain why it has not been started. Because a pre-trial investigation has been launched. Because disclosing the secrets of a pre-trial investigation is a criminal offense. An official investigation has significantly fewer tools for establishing the truth, checking facts and identifying persons who may be involved. And the second point: based on the results of the internal investigation, the person is subject to disciplinary action. And the period for attracting a person is 1 year from the moment of committing a disciplinary offense,” Krivonos noted.
“The last message with the probable disclosure of pre-trial investigation materials and individual investigative actions is dated April 27, 2023. This is what was recorded on the opened phone,” the NABU director noted.
According to him, Krivonos received the memo about the disclosure on April 24 at the end of the day. That is, there was no time for an effective official investigation. It should be recalled that at one time Uglava already escaped disciplinary punishment for the Svinarchuk case.
“Therefore, we believe that in the pre-trial investigation we have significantly more tools. And because disclosing information from a pre-trial investigation is, in principle, a crime,” added the NABU director.
At the same time, according to him, NABU began other internal investigations, in particular due to pressure on whistleblowers.
“As soon as I became aware of the pressure on whistleblowers, an internal investigation was launched based on the person’s corresponding report. His term ends in the last ten days of July. But we plan to complete it in the coming days,” Krivonos said.
In the same internal investigation, other facts were also studied.
In addition, another investigation was launched at the request of the Anti-Corruption Center.
And the third official investigation concerns illegal instructions to the detective and other facts that Krivonos refused to make public. He only clarified that it concerns NABU officials and the events of 2022-23. Here, the results of the investigation are already ready and will be sent to the disciplinary commission, which will give an opinion on what sanctions to apply.
According to Krivonos, familiarization with the materials and study of the situation by the disciplinary commission will take about another month. This should be a rough guide for MPs and the public.
Another interesting nuance. Last week, Gizo Uglava wrote a post that he took a polygraph, which showed that he was not involved in the leaks.
But Krivonos reported that he did not take a polygraph test at NABU Uglava, although he was invited.
So, NABU will give some first conclusions within a month or so.
However, in fact, this should not be the main thing. And finding out how much the epidemic of leaking materials and selling services for opening production facilities has spread in NABU.
The author has heard such accusations against NABU more than once, but without evidence. But with the leak of information, evidence could be heard inside NABU. For example, in the Kolomoisky case. As soon as some kind of meeting was held there, the next day the lawyers of the former oligarch were already standing at the detective’s door, crying that there was no such money for bail.
The biggest attack of paranoia in NABU occurred at the moment when Kolomoisky was detained by the SBU. This also happened exactly after one meeting, where it was decided that the bureau would hand over the suspicion to the oligarch after Krivonos and the head of SAPO Alexander Klimenko returned from the States. That’s where they were caught by the news that Kolomoisky had been served with suspicion from the SBU.
Therefore, it is worth finding out whether all these leaks had the same source.
They say that certain conclusions were drawn after the searches of Kirill Tymoshenko.
