Independence for NABU: Troubling Signals from the Competition for Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau

Independence for NABU: Troubling Signals from the Competition for Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau

Independence for NABU is one of the main principles under the law, because their suspects include, among others, members of parliament, judges, and representatives of the Office of the President.

A competition is currently underway in Ukraine for the position of director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. NABU investigates corruption and other criminal offenses involving Ukrainian high officials. The agency was previously headed by Artem Sytnyk. Whoever replaces him will also lead the bureau for the next 7 years.

21 candidates are currently competing for this position. These are the finalists who have already passed tests on knowledge of laws and solving logical problems. Ahead are interviews on integrity and competence.

And one more question — how independent will the future director of NABU be from directives of the authorities? The word “independence” is mentioned twice in the law “On the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.”

Independence for NABU is one of the main principles under the law, because their suspects include, among others, members of parliament, judges, and representatives of the Office of the President.

Investigators from the Schemes project closely scrutinized all the candidates — and questions arose about some of them. Who are these finalists, do they have ties to the authorities, and what about their integrity?

Vitaliy Vlasiuk

At least two candidates are acquainted with the Deputy Head of the Office of the President, Oleksiy Kuleba. The first candidate is Vitaliy Vlasiuk. He is currently deputy head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration.

Vitaliy Vlasiuk

“Before entering the competition, you spoke with Oleksiy Kuleba, right?” a Schemes journalist asked Vitaliy Vlasiuk.

“I informed him of my intention, and he supported me. He wished me success,” he replied.

Vitaliy Vlasiuk and Oleksiy Kuleba

Vitaliy Vlasiuk’s brother works as an advisor in the Office of the President and is secretary of the working group on sanctions against Russia, which is chaired by Office of the President head Andriy Yermak and former U.S. national security advisor Ambassador Michael McFaul.

Brothers Vladyslav and Vitaliy Vlasiuks

“Your brother is an advisor in the Office of the President?” the Schemes journalist asked.

“Yes, for now I can only say that I am proud of my brother’s work. And of their sanctions group,” Vitaliy Vlasiuk answered.

“Do you think there might be any preferential treatment?”

“There is legislation in this case. Within the framework of the law — all real and potential conflicts will be resolved if it concerns recommending me to the shortlist or for appointment,” he replied.

The candidate for NABU director owns a Lexus RX 350 2020 model year and a Tesla Model S from 2017. Both were purchased without loans, according to the candidate.

He was also able to give his wife a Swiss Rolex watch as a gift. Among other reasons, Vlasiuk declared bitcoin cryptocurrency.

Vitaliy Vlasiuk indicated in his declaration that he owns bitcoins

“Did you give your wife the Rolex?” the journalist asked.

“Yes,” Vlasiuk replied.

“Do you like valuable items?”

“A normal good watch. And a normal gift for a person I’m in such a relationship with,” he said.

Although the candidate says he paid 5% taxes when mining the cryptocurrency, its value appears to have been assessed at his own discretion.

“Unfortunately, the declaration does not allow precise entry of information regarding an activity such as mining. Mining is when machines run and generate cryptocurrency,” Vitaliy Vlasiuk said.

After the conversation, Schemes analyzed the candidate’s public cryptocurrency address. He himself listed it in his declaration.

First, he significantly undervalued the worth of his 10 bitcoins. Vitaliy Vlasiuk valued them at one million hryvnias as of 31 December 2021, although their market value at that time, according to an anti-corruption expert, was thirteen times higher.

Bitcoin value as of 31 December 2021

“The price of 10,18 bitcoins at the end of 2021 was equivalent to 450 thousand euros, about 13 million in hryvnias,” says anti-corruption expert Tilman Hoppe.

Second, at the public address where his ten bitcoins were supposed to be, there were actually none as of April of the twenty-first year. Schemes asked Hoppe to analyze the single public bitcoin address without the candidate’s surname.

Balance at the wallet address provided by Vlasiuk

“Bitcoin is fully transparent. Anyone can look up, if you know the public address, all transactions throughout the history of that specific public address. This information from such public bitcoin addresses is confirmed evidence under U.S. court decisions. Regarding this address one can make a clear statement — it has zero bitcoins right now and the last transaction was in 2021,” Hoppe said.

Schemes asked candidate Vlasiuk how he could explain all these inaccuracies in his declaration.

“How it all works: there is equipment that generates these bitcoins. It drips slowly each day into one account. Then on certain days I withdraw them, you understand, and transfer them to a so-called ‘cold wallet.’ It’s impossible to give the cold wallet’s address,” Vitaliy Vlasiuk said.

A so-called “cold wallet” is, among other things, a special device for storing cryptocurrency. Like a USB drive. Experts who spoke with Schemes say that even in this case a public address is automatically generated. But the candidate did not provide it.

“There is a public address; it is automatically assigned to that wallet. Why can’t you provide it?” journalist Serhiy Andrushko asked Vlasiuk.

“It’s hard for me to answer because I don’t know such a thing. I did it as best I could and as I knew how. (...) Have you tried filling out the declaration yourself? I’m just curious about your opinion. Is it easy to fill out? At every step it tells you — ‘logical error.’ And you try to understand what the logical error is. And at some point you’re just happy that it accepted your declaration, otherwise you’d violate your duty and not submit it,” the candidate replied.

One of the basic integrity criteria is proper declaration. Which the candidate Vlasiuk, at least in the information about his bitcoins, appears not to have demonstrated.

Semen Kryvonos

Semen Kryvonos is another candidate for NABU director who is acquainted with current Deputy Head of the Office of the President Oleksiy Kuleba.

Semen Kryvonos

When Kuleba worked in the Kyiv City State Administration, Kryvonos’s wife worked with him.

“What connects you with Kuleba?” a journalist asked Semen Kryvonos.

“Nothing at all. I know him, but nothing professionally connects us. I’ve known him for about eight years, probably,” he replied.

“How did you meet him?”

“I will answer all questions after the practical test. I still need to prepare,” he said.

“How did it happen that your wife worked together with Oleksiy Kuleba?”

“Well, it just happened.”

The candidate is now head of the State Inspectorate of Architecture and Urban Development of Ukraine — an institution that, among other things, issues construction licenses.

Politician Mikheil Saakashvili previously wrote that Kryvonos’s appointment to this position was fully supported by current head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak.

The candidate has a history related to bribery.

“What is the story about receiving a bribe?” a Schemes journalist asked.

“There was no bribe, I am not a suspect, not accused, it’s absolute nonsense. I did not receive any bribe. I am a corruption whistleblower, and at my statement a person was detained by NABU while attempting to give me a bribe,” Kryvonos replied.

As Schemes found out, the candidate was actually connected to two separate bribery cases each involving the same amount — 120 thousand dollars. In one case he was a whistleblower, which NABU investigated last year.

The other case — in 2014 — was investigated by the SBU. According to the court register, the head of one village council in the Obukhiv district of Kyiv region, allegedly conspiring with the head of the registration service of the local justice department, demanded an unlawful benefit for allocation of a land plot — in the amount of 120 thousand dollars.

Kryvonos, in 2014 according to his autobiography, was then the head of that registration service.

Kryvonos himself explained that the investigation’s version was not confirmed, and the Office of the Prosecutor General reported that the case was closed due to absence of a crime.

In 2016 Kryvonos had already won the competition for director of NABU’s Odesa territorial office. But he refused to take the position. Why?

Semen Kryvonos in 2016, when he won the competition for director of NABU’s Odesa territorial office

“There was some manipulative information... NABU was then being formed, it was just the establishment of this institution, I decided to refuse and remain working at the Odesa customs service,” Kryvonos said.

The candidate declined the position at the moment when then-journalist Dmytro Hnap was preparing a publication about Kryvonos’s failure to declare an apartment — of a value disproportionate to his then salary — and about the start of an investigation into possible bribery.

Ruslan Gabrielyan

Ruslan Gabrielyan is a volunteer soldier. Back in January he participated in the competition as a candidate. After two tests he ranked second.

Ruslan Gabrielyan

As a NABU detective, Gabrielyan led a high-profile case in which Deputy Head of the Office of the President Oleg Tatarov was implicated. It was a case about embezzlement during the construction of apartments for the National Guard.

Oleg Tatarov

“In that proceeding, a notice of suspicion was signed, and a motion for preventive measures in the form of detention was filed. And the fate of that criminal proceeding is known, so I would not like to comment,” Gabrielyan said.

“Do you mean Tatarov?” the Schemes journalist asked.

“Yes.”

A week and a half after filming, Gabrielyan was suddenly excluded from the competition.

On 25 January the commission asked the Office of the Prosecutor General to clarify whether the candidate had five years of managerial experience — a condition for participation in the competition. And this request came a month after the same commission had admitted the candidate to participate and found that Gabrielyan met all the criteria.

In its reply letter, the Office of the Prosecutor General, among other managerial positions, did not mention the candidate’s managerial experience in the military prosecutor’s offices.

Because — quote — “his personal file was sent to the Kropyvnytskyi district military enlistment office.”

“The candidate submitted a statement to the competition commission. In it he asked the commission to request a written response from the specialized military and defense prosecutor’s office of the Southern region in response to the Office of the Prosecutor General’s request regarding his managerial experience. I believe the commission already has all the necessary information,” said Mykola Kucheriavenko, head of the commission selecting the NABU director, during the meeting.

It appears the commission had part of the documents about the candidate’s managerial experience. In particular, the order on Gabrielyan’s functional duties, which assigned him oversight of prosecutor’s offices in two regions for compliance with laws in the military sphere.

The letter from the Office of the Prosecutor General that omitted mention of Gabrielyan’s managerial experience — on the basis of which he was excluded from the competition — was signed by Anton Voytenko. He is a deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine. Is there a conflict of interest here?

Anton Voytenko

In response to Schemes’ request, the OPG replied: “the participation in the competition of persons who are employees of the prosecutor’s offices does not indicate the presence of a conflict of interest.”

Yuriy Bielousov

A colleague of the aforementioned Voytenko — head of a department at the Office of the Prosecutor General, Yuriy Bielousov — is also participating in this competition. He is at the bottom of the ranking list.

Yuriy Bielousov

What anti-corruption experience does Bielousov have, who before working at the Office of the Prosecutor General was a scholar and worked, among other things, in various civil society organizations that focused on human rights.

“Do you have any history of fighting corruption?” a journalist asked Bielousov.

“Working at the Office of the Prosecutor General, we had a number of proceedings similar in subject matter to NABU’s topics, in particular about procurement and financial abuses by state institutions which we investigated; unfortunately I cannot provide many details,” he replied.

Ruslan Kravchenko

Another candidate — Ruslan Kravchenko — is also a colleague of Deputy Prosecutor General Voytenko; he worked shoulder to shoulder with him in the military prosecutor’s office of the central region. Kravchenko ranks first in the rating.

Ruslan Kravchenko

Kravchenko currently heads the Bucha prosecution office, and worked as a military prosecutor during Anatoliy Matios’s tenure. At that time the chief military prosecutor Matios was remembered, among other things, for the high-profile and so far unresolved case of the so-called “helicopter tax officers.” Suspects were publicly brought in by helicopter. That was 2017. There is still no verdict in that case.

Collage: Anatoliy Matios and suspects who were publicly brought in by helicopter

Ruslan Kravchenko was a prosecutor in the case in which former President Yanukovych was found guilty of treason and assisting in waging an aggressive war.

According to Kravchenko’s declarations, after receiving official housing in December 2018, in 2019 he privatized it and, it appears, sold it that same year.

“What is your connection to Matios?” a journalist asked.

“None,” Kravchenko replied.

“Did you work with him under his leadership?”

“No. There was a head of the department and deputies before him; it didn’t reach him.”

“About your official apartment — you received it and privatized it?”

“No, I first received it, then privatized it when the legal grounds appeared.”

“What were those grounds?”

“I don’t have the documents with me now. I will provide them to the commission. I passed all checks, the general inspection, financial monitoring. In my opinion, I did not violate any law.”

Oleksandr Vikul

Prosecutor from Vinnytsia Oleksandr Vikul wrote a “recipe” for fighting corruption in his questionnaire.

Oleksandr Vikul

“In the questionnaire you wrote that ‘first of all I will ask everyone to abandon corrupt schemes and bribery,’” the Schemes journalist noted.

“Yes. Strange, right? I myself do not engage in it and I do not recommend others to, I even ask them not to engage in it,” Vikul replied.

“And then you write that ‘Ukrainian media vigorously spread news about bribery, thousands of reports, and pay no attention to good.’ What did you mean?”

“That is what I meant.”

“As future director of NABU, would you like to lead with good...”

“Yes, that is really my position — I believe we have too much negativity in the information space highlighting corruption, corrupt officials, bribes. And we don’t say enough about the fact that there are honest employees, and even honest judges,” he said.

In his questionnaire the prosecutor from Vinnytsia wrote about possible commission doubts concerning the value of his car.

“The appraiser, when valuing the car, valued it at that sum. And when I said that it didn’t quite match the market and reality, he said that everyone values like that, that’s his valuation,” Oleksandr Vikul said.

“And you paid the seller more, right?” Schemes journalist Serhiy Andrushko clarified.

“Correct.”

“So that means the difference did not go to the state as paid taxes?”

“Well, not that difference, but from that sum a certain percentage should have been paid as tax.”

“If you become NABU director, how will you act when people don’t pay taxes?”

“Principledly,” Vikul answered, laughing.

Roman Udovychenko

Candidate for NABU director — prosecutor from Sumy region Roman Udovychenko — told a “lifehack” on how to buy a 7-year-old Volkswagen Passat for 30 thousand hryvnias.

Roman Udovychenko

“My wife’s father bought the car from his acquaintance, not me. They bought a non-running, technically defective car from acquaintances. They handled it, concluded the contract at the MREO, set some price. When I needed to file a declaration, I raised all the documents and accounted for it according to official documents,” Udovychenko said.

“Do you mean that officially it was 30 thousand, but in reality it was more?” the journalist clarified.

“No-no, they agreed among themselves with their acquaintances.”

Oleksandr Rudenko

Finalist for NABU director — lawyer Oleksandr Rudenko. Schemes previously filmed how he participated in the competition for director of the State Bureau of Investigation, which took place right in the Office of the President.

Oleksandr Rudenko

Despite having no reported income in 2021, according to his declaration, and another year not disclosed — he paid half a million for a loan.

“My assets date back to the 2017-2019 years; they allowed me to do all this (repay — ed.). Assets are declared, taxes are paid,” Rudenko said.

“So if you have such assets, why take a loan?” the Schemes journalist asked.

“It was a family matter.”

“How is it that you had no hryvnia income if that year you engaged in advocacy work?”

“Besides advocacy work, I also actively engage in civic activities, directly volunteering.”

Serhiy Naumiuk

Another candidate — Serhiy Naumiuk — according to his autobiography works at NABU. Since June 2016 he has been head of the Fourth Detectives Unit of the Main Detectives Department. As Schemes discovered, his father — Anatoliy Naumiuk — appears to hold a Russian passport.

On the website of the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation, data are recorded about his individual tax number and it confirms the presence of Russian citizenship for the father of the NABU director candidate.

Serhiy Naumiuk

“Do your relatives have Russian citizenship?” a journalist asked Naumiuk.

“No,” he replied.

“Where are your parents now?”

“My parents are currently in the United States.”

“Did they go to Russia?”

“That’s better to ask them.”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s better to ask them.”

“How do you feel about this?”

“That’s their private matter.”

“Did any of your close relatives remain in the occupied territories after the occupation of Crimea?”

“After the occupation of Crimea, yes? My parents’ permanent residence was the city of Luhansk; they were there until the start of armed aggression. After that they moved to the United States, to my brother.”

“Are there risks if the future director of NABU has relatives in Russia or in occupied territories?”

“The future director of NABU can have relatives anywhere, in Russia, the U.S., any other country. But he must be guided only by the interests of the Ukrainian people.”

Serhiy Hupiak

Serhiy Hupiak works at the State Bureau of Investigation in Khmelnytskyi, based in Vinnytsia, as stated in his questionnaire. It turned out that most of his assets, including half the value of a Toyota RAV4 hybrid, were acquired thanks to his parents.

Serhiy Hupiak

“I am a co-owner together with my mother. I contributed half of the value of over 900 thousand, my mother contributed the other half. Currently my mother is not working, but she worked for a long time as a sole proprietor and also as an engineer in various institutions. So she had time to accumulate and save certain funds,” Serhiy Hupiak said.

Selection of candidates

The selection commission, half of which is international experts, must pick three candidates from 21 finalists. They must do this after interviews on integrity and competence. Exactly how the three best candidates will be determined is still not entirely clear to the commission chair.

“How will you vote for the three winners?” a Schemes journalist asked Mykola Kucheriavenko, head of the commission for selecting the NABU director.

Mykola Kucheriavenko, head of the commission for selecting the NABU director

“I think there is no strictly defined voting procedure; together with commission members we will exchange opinions, and someone may try to persuade someone else, someone may give up their view under the influence of others’ arguments,” he replied.

“So you will still each propose three?”

“We will discuss it further.”

Cabinet of Ministers

The Cabinet of Ministers must select a single winner of the competition for NABU director from the three candidates chosen by the qualification commission.

The law does not specify the criteria by which the winner will be chosen.

Published in Radio Svoboda