"Carthage" and "single window": how law enforcement could have been dividing millions from fraudulent call centers

4 September the NABU and the SAP announced operation “Carthage” — an investigation into the activities of a probable criminal organization led by a official of the Office of the Prosecutor General, involved, according to the investigation, in shielding fraudulent call centers and laundering funds.

The first detainee was the official of the OPG Serhiy Kropyva — the “Chancellor” in NABU materials. Investigative actions were conducted in the Office of the Prosecutor General’s premises, as well as against Deputy Prosecutor General Mariya Vdovichenko and the head of Odesa Regional Military Administration Oleh Kiper, who previously headed Kyiv city prosecutor’s office.

The OPG confirmed that investigative actions were conducted in the ministry’s premises.

However, “Carthage” opened only one branch of a much larger system of shielding call centers — the prosecutor’s branch.

According to ZN.UA sources, about two thousand fraudulent call centers may operate in Ukraine. More than a thousand of them in this environment are called “white.” Not because they work legally, but because they have security protection, pay a monthly “subscription,” and may not fear searches.

Centers that did not join this system are called “black” or “partisans.” It is these, according to ZN.UA interlocutors, that most often become the subject of showy searches and imitation of the fight against call centers.

Thus, closing such offices could be not only law enforcement activity but also a way to remove competitors who have already paid for protection.

The system long operated through a so-called “one window.” Each of the more than a thousand “white” call centers, according to sources, paid about 20 thousand dollars per month there. The money was mostly collected by representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine, after which it was distributed among structures involved in shielding.

If you look beyond this “one window,” interlocutors say, you can see representatives of the SBU, HUR (Military Intelligence), the Department of Strategic Investigations of the National Police, the prosecutor’s office, the Financial Monitoring Service, and even individual representatives of the State Border Service. The exact mechanism of money distribution and the role of each structure’s representatives still require verification.

However, even a rough calculation shows the scale of the potential market. More than a thousand protected points, each paying 20 thousand dollars, — that’s more than 20 million dollars per month. Not a “subscription,” not the entire profit of the call centers themselves and not the total amount of money stolen from victims, but a possible payment to security services for a safe operation of criminal business.

According to sources, previously for every 20 thousand dollars three thousand were designated for prosecutors’ representatives. After Ruslan Krawchenko became Prosecutor General, this share allegedly rose to seven thousand, and the total “subscription” — from 20 to 24 thousand dollars from each point.

Therefore, the total volume of monthly payments could have grown from over 20 to over 24 million dollars, and the prosecutors’ representatives’ share from over three to over seven million.

This redistribution, according to sources, could have disrupted the established balance. The new demands did not suit some call-center owners and possibly other participants in the system. Someone could have handed NABU information that helped anti-corruption authorities reach the prosecutor’s branch. The same “greed of the villain ruined”.

In the Chancellor’s records, he describes the scale of the system already built by the boss: “Funny, what an empire the boss made.”

NABU notes that the “boss” previously headed the State Tax Service and, after leaving, retained influence there. These markers coincide with Ruslan Kravchenko’s biography, but NABU does not name his surname and has not reported suspicion of the Attorney General.

Meanwhile, Western partners have long signaled to Ukrainian authorities about the scale of the problem: call centers in Ukraine defrauded EU citizens of tens of millions of euros, and in one of the cases described by international researchers the EU and the United Kingdom directly demanded Ukrainian law enforcement close such an office. About three to four weeks before the public phase of “Carthage,” law enforcers realized NABU was working on the call centers topic.

According to ZN.UA sources, after this there was a meeting with the president, at which the need to close fraudulent offices was discussed. One of those given the task was acting head of the SBU Oleksandr Poklad.

After this began a campaign aimed at public effect, designed to show active fight against call centers. 12 August the National Police reported 411 searches and termination of work of 94 fraudulent offices.

In the “Carthage” records Kropyva also discusses how to close about ten centers per week and to promote this work well on the media.

According to the investigation, the aim of such searches was not always to stop the activity of call centers. “Chancellor” could help market participants and use law enforcement opportunities against others, creating at the same time a picture of systematic fight against crime in this sphere.

In the evening of 1 September, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine must “completely finish” with fraudulent call centers, and the next day sent to the Verkhovna Rada the corresponding bills. Such speed of reaction suggests that the authorities already knew about the approaching public phase of the investigation.

One of the possible sources of such a signal could be digital traces in state registries, but there is no confirmation yet.

Thus, the president’s statement and urgently introduced bills were not the start of the fight against call centers, but the end of the government’s preventive response to an investigation that was already unfolding.

Initially, law enforcement understood that NABU was working on this topic, then began a campaign of mass searches, after which statements by Zelensky and legislative initiatives appeared — and only then did NABU enter the public phase of the operation.

Now the main question is whether NABU will go further than the prosecutor’s branch: to the SBU and other participants of the “one window.” And whether this path can be traversed without leaks and coercive pressure.

Because it concerns whether part of the state law enforcement system turned the fight against crime into a paid service for crime itself — closing some centers, protecting others, and earning millions from it.