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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
14 September saw a new unexpected escalation of the conflict between the anti-corruption agencies and the still-serving prosecutor general Ruslan Kravchenko, who last week submitted his resignation amid a corruption scandal. In the morning he said he had signed suspicions of extortion, document forgery and other crimes against National Anti-Corruption Bureau Director Semen Kryvonos and an “individual close to the head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office Oleksandr Klymenko.” At the same time he issued an order for his own business trip to France and left the country in an official car. Later Zelensky suspended Kravchenko, and by evening everything had returned to the starting point: the Prosecutor General’s Office said the suspicions “were deprived of legal effect” and are not in force.
Suspilne explains what exactly the prosecutor general suspected the NABU director and the “person close to the head of the SAP” of, and what prevented Kravchenko from carrying out his plan to the end.
"The true reason for the night assault"
4 September NABU and the SAP announced a special operation called “Carthage” and carried out searches at the Prosecutor General’s Office and at the home of that office’s head Ruslan Kravchenko. Later they announced suspicions of creating a criminal organization and money laundering against the deputy head of the Department for International Cooperation of the PGO, Serhiy Kropyva. According to the investigation, he took bribes to “cover” fraudulent call centers — underground offices whose employees call foreigners and Ukrainians, posing as bank workers and persuading them to transfer money to other accounts.
NABU and the SAP claim that Kropyva ensured that law enforcement did not interfere with the work of certain call centers and created problems for their competitors. For this he received millions of hryvnias, which he then “laundered” — buying real estate and registering it to members of his family and relatives of his driver and mistress. According to the investigation, Kropyva managed this thanks to close relations with the prosecutor general. Anti-corruption officers published fragments of secretly recorded conversations between Kropyva and Kravchenko, which confirm that he traveled with the prosecutor general, booked hotel rooms and restaurants for him, and also oversaw repairs at his house.
In response the prosecutor general dismissed Kropyva and at the same time said he himself was not involved in “covering” call centers or any other violations. At a meeting with journalists 7 September he said he did not intend to resign. But a few hours later he met with the president and then did submit a resignation letter. At the same time he continued to perform the duties of prosecutor general, since the resignation still has to be supported by the Verkhovna Rada at the president’s request.
Exactly a week later, on the morning of 14 September Kravchenko unexpectedly published a video statement in which he said that in reality the anti-corruption agencies staged operation “Carthage” to “gain access to the case materials concerning the leaders and employees of NABU and the SAP, and after that remove the prosecutor general and halt procedural decisions in the cases.” According to him, they ultimately “copied and stole part of the documents and electronic data.”
Kravchenko added: “so as not to be empty words,” he signed a suspicion of extortion and document forgery against NABU director Semen Kryvonos. And not only that. “The second suspicion concerns a person close to the head of the SAP for influencing the judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court, offering them unlawful benefits, and also assisting in evasion from mobilization. This criminal proceeding became the trigger and the true reason for the night assault on the Prosecutor General’s Office,” Ruslan Kravchenko said.
He added that prior to announcing the suspicions he was restrained by the president and by the anti-corruption officers themselves, who “offered guarantees of immunity in exchange for refusing to issue the suspicions.”
Typically prosecutors read suspicions in person when they come to suspects. As a rule, searches follow. But the prosecutor general said that the suspicions against Kryvonos and the “person close to Klymenko” were sent by mail.
On the day the suspicions were announced Kravchenko issued an order for his own business trip to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe hearings in France for five days. According to sources of Suspilne in the authorities, that same day he crossed the border in an official vehicle. At the same time, the PACE spokesperson said the prosecutor general would not participate in their events.
Ukrainska Pravda, citing unnamed sources, reported that Kravchenko’s wife Oleksandra Shovkoplias also left the country. She also appears on recordings in the “Carthage” case: judging by them, Kravchenko’s subordinate Kropyva bought her a laptop and arranged a U.S. visa for her. Suspilne called Shovkoplias, but she said she “does not give interviews” and hung up.
President Zelensky reacted quickly to Kravchenko’s video statement. “This prosecutor general has only one path: dismissal from office. That is exactly what I told him. Ukraine has seen all the reasons. If he considers this political pressure, let him call it that. I ask parliamentarians to support this dismissal immediately,” he wrote on his Telegram channel and soon after suspended Kravchenko from his duties and sent a submission on his dismissal to parliament.
Bribe for land and fictitious paternity
Shortly after Kravchenko published the full text of the suspicion against Semen Kryvonos on Telegram. The Security Service of Ukraine registered proceedings against him as early as April 2014, when the future head of NABU was a low-level official in the Kyiv region — head of the registration service of the Obukhiv City District Justice Department. The suspicion states that in March 2014 a man named Ruzmatov wanted to obtain land to build a house in the village of Stari Bezradychi near Kyiv and applied to the village head. That official allegedly demanded a bribe of 72 thousand dollars.
The suspicion states that the village head involved Kryvonos in the crime, who for secrecy first proposed issuing the land plot to a front person who would then sell it to Ruzmatov. According to the investigation, Kryvonos also found an expert who artificially undervalued the land to avoid paying large taxes on the sale. The suspicion says that in the end Kryvonos and other scheme participants did not complete the crime because they learned “of the exposure of their illegal activities.”
These accusations against Kryvonos first surfaced back in 2016, when he worked on the team of then-Odesa governor Mikheil Saakashvili and won the competition to head the Odesa NABU office. Then the media outlet Slidstvo.info doubted his integrity and released a story about a possible bribe in Stari Bezradychi.
Kryvonos himself in that video says that in 2014 he was twice questioned in this case as a witness, but “no fact was confirmed.” The then-head of NABU Artem Sytnyk also stated that according to the bureau’s internal check Kryvonos had not violated anything. But shortly before the journalistic investigation was published he nevertheless stepped down from the position at NABU so as “not to put the bureau at risk.”
The second episode in the suspicion signed by Kravchenko concerns even earlier events. In 2008, when Kryvonos was still a university student, he was prosecuted for bribing voters. According to the investigation at the time, he for money offered people to vote for the “Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko.”
But in 2009 the court amnestied him because he had a minor child to support. The current suspicion says that Kryvonos actually did not have a child. According to Kravchenko, for the sake of amnesty he found a single mother and persuaded her to sign a fictitious document that he was the father of her son. To support this, the prosecutor general published video fragments of the woman’s interrogation, who confirmed that Kryvonos was not the father of her child. According to her, he told her that the recognition of paternity was needed for him to get a job in a foreign company.
These allegations against Kryvonos are also not new. In March this year the same woman gave an interview to former MP and blogger Boryslav Bereza.
Kryvonos during the competition for the head of NABU said that he did not actually bribe voters. According to him, he was an active student and “together with like-minded people fought the university administration, which tried to influence voting in favor of candidates who were beneficial to them.” “Law enforcement representatives were set on us. They acted very roughly. Several students were detained,” Kryvonos told the selection commission.
He did not comment on the allegations about the fictitious paternity.
"The Telegram suspicion and nonsense"
In the evening of 14 September the heads of NABU and the SAP gathered journalists at a briefing and called the prosecutor general’s actions an “unprecedented information attack on the anti-corruption agencies, the likes of which Ukraine has never seen.” Kryvonos said that it was Kravchenko who was the “executor” of the previous attack by the authorities on his agency in July 2025. Then the SBU and the State Bureau of Investigations carried out massive searches of bureau employees, after which the Verkhovna Rada passed a law depriving NABU and the SAP of independence on the pretext that they were influenced by Russians. Soon after, deputies and the president restored the anti-corruption agencies’ powers under the pressure of street protests and European partners.
“Today we saw such an incomprehensible invention and the informational genre ‘Telegram-suspicion.’ Personally, I did not see a paper document, no one directly handed me a notification of suspicion,” Kryvonos said.
He did not present his version regarding the suspicion and said he “will not comment on nonsense.”
SAP head Klymenko added that none of his family members received a suspicion. “If this close person is found — let them say who it is, what suspicion they received and for what,” he said.
In his view, Kravchenko’s actions are a reaction to operation “Carthage” and “the exposure of a person close to the prosecutor general.” Journalists asked whether the prosecutor general coordinated his actions with the president or with his faction head in parliament, Davyd Arakhamia. The heads of NABU and the SAP said that further events and the investigative actions that take place in these proceedings will show that.
Late in the evening the Prosecutor General’s Office said that Kryvonos had not been notified of a suspicion in the manner prescribed by law and there were no grounds for it. And the statements about the alleged suspicion are “deprived of legal effect.” The press service of the Office added to Suspilne that the suspicion “to the person close to the head of the SAP” likewise did not take effect.
Who exactly made that decision is still unclear. According to the PGO, before leaving the country Kravchenko did not designate who would perform his duties. His first deputy Iryna Vdovychenko resigned after valuable watches were found in her safe that had been gifted by a suspect in the “Carthage” case.
15 September the Verkhovna Rada is to vote on Kravchenko’s dismissal. In the evening Zelensky also said he submitted a bill to increase penalties for operating fraudulent call centers and urged deputies to vote for it and for the prosecutor general’s dismissal.
Despite all this, Kravchenko is not giving up and after all of it published Ukrposhta data about a letter sent to Kryvonos with the signature “the suspicion is heading to the recipient.”
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "«Підозра прямує до отримувача». Остання гастроль генпрокурора перед закритим шлагбаумом". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: CRIMINAL UKRAINE.
