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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The president submitted the nomination only when the situation around Ruslan Kravchenko escalated, not immediately after his resignation statement became known.
The Verkhovna Rada voted for the resignation of Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who, after appearing in a new NABU investigation, claimed to have signed a suspicion notice against the Bureau’s director, then fled abroad — and even with his wife. The resignation decision was supported by 317 deputies.
Factions voted as follows:
"Servant of the People" — "for" 198;
"European Solidarity" — "for" 24;
"Batkivshchyna" — "for" 14;
"Platform for Life and Peace" — "for" 17;
"Holos" — "for" 14;
"Dovira" — "for" 11;
"For the Future" — "for" 12;
"Restoration of Ukraine" — "for" 14;
Non-affiliated — 13.
To be supplemented…
Note that the news about Kravchenko’s resignation statement appeared back in 7 September. However, President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted the nomination to parliament only on 14 September, when Kravchenko decided to accuse Semen Kryvonos of "forging official documents to obtain a bribe on an especially large scale and fictitious adoption in order to artificially create grounds to avoid responsibility in court." Until then, the president had not been in a hurry to submit it.
Kravchenko made the accusation against Kryvonos amid the confrontation over NABU’s investigation in the "Carthage" case. The latter concerns the exposure of corruption schemes involving call centers and prosecution employees. It was on the tapes recorded during that operation that the former prosecutor general appeared. In particular, on the recordings the main character of the tapes, "Chancellor," speaks with his "boss" Andriyovych and assures him that no one "insults" him because "you are behind me, so everyone knows."
But this is not the first time Kravchenko has taken part in attacks on anti-corruption agencies. Last year he legalized unlawful persecution and signed a suspicion notice against NABU detective Ruslan Magamedrasudov, accusing him of alleged intentions to trade with Russia. The Bureau then emphasized that a court decision to carry out investigative actions had not been issued. Those searches became the start of a large-scale campaign attempting to deprive NABU and the SAP of independence and subordinate them to no one other than the prosecutor general.
Another decision by Kravchenko worth recalling concerns the cancellation of the Regulation on the procedure for selecting candidates for the personnel reserve to fill administrative positions in prosecutorial bodies. It regulated the procedure for selecting prosecutors to include in the personnel reserve for leadership positions and provided for a transparent three-stage competition. It also required consideration of a prosecutor’s disciplinary offenses, work experience, integrity, and correspondence between lifestyle and declared income, which were to be taken into account during the competition. However, Kravchenko said that the idea of creating such a selection mechanism was correct, but "the procedures turned out to be overly complex, overregulated, protracted and, in certain aspects, discriminatory."
Overall, Kravchenko is a product of the prosecution system and an ATO veteran. He headed the Bucha prosecutor’s office. In the past he worked in the military prosecutor’s office during the leadership of the scandal-plagued military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios. The latter, like Kravchenko now, stood behind a number of attacks on NABU. Note that the former prosecutor general applied for the position of SAP prosecutor but was not selected. Kravchenko also tried to become NABU director, but he was not chosen for that position either. In the Bureau application, among people who could provide recommendations, Kravchenko listed the then head of the Obolon District Court of Kyiv, Vladyslav Deviatko. According to the Prosud project, Deviatko is an entirely dependent and hand-picked judge who imprisoned EuroMaidan activist Oleksiy Salyha after he was beaten by Berkut on Krioposnyi Lane, and also unjustifiably revoked the driver’s licenses of two participants in a motor rally to Mezhyhirya.
Recall that SAP head Oleksandr Klymenko stated that attacks on anti-corruption bodies last July and now were carried out not only by the prosecutor general but also by the "lawyer-hacker" — former deputy chief military prosecutor and a suspect in the "lawyer-hackers" case, Dmytro Borzykh. In early August Borzykh filed a lawsuit in the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv against ZN.UA and the head of the internal politics desk, Inna Vedernikova. He demands that the court recognize as false the information from the investigation "The Lawyer-Hackers Case. How NABU Uncovered Parasites" and a number of subsequent publications.
At the same time, Kryvonos added that employees of the Security Service of Ukraine were also involved in attacks on NABU, in particular staff of the Main Department of the Department for the Protection of National Statehood (DZND). He pointed out that employees of some service departments "had dossiers" on certain anti-corruption employees.
In the article "A Test for Zelensky. Will He Change the Rules for Appointing the Prosecutor General After Kravchenko’s Resignation?" the head of the legal department of the Anti-Corruption Center, Olena Shcherban, explained why the next appointment to head the OGPO will be a trial for the president.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "ВР підтримала відставку Кравченка". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ZN.ua.
