Ruslan Kravchenko’s Foreign Business Trip: OPG Has Opened an Internal Investigation

“Appropriate decisions will be made” based on the results of the internal investigation.

The Office of the Prosecutor General is investigating the situation regarding former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko’s foreign business trip. This was reported by OPG spokeswoman Maryana Haiovska in a comment to "Ukrainska Pravda."

According to her, on 22 September Acting Prosecutor General Anton Kovalsky initiated an internal investigation into the circumstances of Kravchenko’s foreign official trip.

"As part of the investigation, compliance with the established procedure for arranging and carrying out the trip is being checked, as well as the circumstances that may have contributed to possible violations," the OPG spokeswoman said.

Maryana Haiovska added that, based on the results of the internal investigation, the prosecutor’s office “will make appropriate decisions.”

Earlier the media reported that Ruslan Kravchenko received a record salary for September of almost 340 thousand UAH. Such a significant difference in pay, according to the OPG statement, was due to Kravchenko receiving compensation for 64 days of unused vacation. In previous months the ex-prosecutor general was typically paid a little over 160 thousand hryvnias, and after taxes he received 125 thousand UAH per month.

On the morning of 14 September, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko announced that he had signed a charge against NABU Director Semen Kryvonos, whom he suspects “of falsifying official documents to obtain a bribe of an especially large amount,” as well as “stealing documents” related to cases against NABU and SAP leaders and employees from the prosecutor general’s office.

It later became known that Kravchenko left the country during the night. By the time he left for his alleged business trip, the prosecutor apparently understood he might be leaving the country for good — at one o’clock in the morning he refused state protection, and two hours later he crossed the border through the Shehyni checkpoint. His wife had left the country several days earlier.

This week it became known that Ruslan Kravchenko registered in Vienna, at an address that is the office of a company providing legal addresses. Choosing Austria for residence is quite symbolic for Kravchenko, since the country does not extradite its citizens to Ukraine when they are suspected of various offenses.

The events occurred after NABU and SAP conducted searches in the prosecutor general’s office on 4 September as part of the “Carthage” case. The investigation exposed the activities of a criminal organization led by an official of the prosecutor general’s office that was covering up fraudulent call centers and money legalization schemes.

Ruslan Kravchenko himself is not currently directly implicated in the case, but the recordings mention a “Boss,” whose name neither the NABU detective nor the SAP prosecutor have disclosed so far. They note that the “Boss” previously headed the Tax Service, and the “Chancellor” during a phone conversation with one of his accomplices calls him “Andriyovych,” which matches the biographical data and patronymic of the current prosecutor general.

What did the former prosecutor general leave behind, and why can’t NABU Director Semen Kryvonos simply brush off questions about his past, even if the charge against him is part of a political attack? And will Volodymyr Zelensky take the opportunity to not only appoint another “his” prosecutor general but to change the system itself — through a transparent competition and prosecution reform? Read about this in detail in Inna Vedernikova’s article “The Fugitive Syndrome: How Not to Turn the State Into a Meme.”