Former NABU detective Taras Likunov: “The back office at Ukrzaliznytsia was 100% identical to the back office of Energoatom”

At the beginning of October the High Anti-Corruption Court approved a deal with a former adviser to the presidential office and an employee of the SBU, Artyom Shil, in a case about embezzlement at Ukrzaliznytsia (UZ). The case concerns the operation of a back office at UZ, which regulated tender procurements of transformers and cables that took place in 2021–2023 years. The amount of losses to the state in the schemes was 182 million hryvnias.

While the case was being investigated, parliament attempted to strip powers from the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Office of the Prosecutor General announced suspicions against two NABU detectives — Ruslan Magamedrasulov and Viktor Husarov, who were later arrested by Kyiv district courts and sent to pretrial detention.

Parallel to the arrests of detectives last autumn, the Security Service conducted searches of those who investigated Shilo’s case. These were four former detectives who now work in the Ukrzaliznytsia’s Corporate Security Department.

One of them is Taras Likunov. A former prosecutor of Volyn region, he joined NABU in the first cohort of detectives and now heads the department of service checks on interaction with law enforcement agencies and personnel security at UZ. Likunov, together with colleagues, investigated cases involving the Dvubnychi brothers, Odessa-based organized crime groups, in which former city mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov is implicated, businessmen Borys Kaufman and Oleksandr Hranovskyi, as well as the back office of Ukrzaliznytsia organized by Shilo.

The transfer of NABU detectives who investigated corruption at Ukrzaliznytsia to work in the company itself sparked mixed reactions at the time. Why they decided to work where they had recently uncovered corrupt schemes, and what they managed to change, these questions remained without sufficient public explanations.

Today Likunov looks at NABU from the outside and can evaluate what is happening in the institution from a certain distance, including the role of its leadership.

In general, the Ukrzaliznytsia story is one example of how NABU’s experience and practices extend beyond the Bureau itself. While its opponents criticize the appointment of former detectives to key state positions, these people may gradually change the genetic code of the state itself. Whether they will succeed, or the system will eventually change them — remains an open question.

About back offices, changes at Ukrzaliznytsia, and NABU from the inside and from the outside — in an interview with Taras Likunov.

About NABU and the role of the head

— Mr. Likunov, let’s start from the beginning. What in 2015 year forced the prosecutor of Volyn region to drop everything and go to work at NABU?

— It was a chance to participate in active changes in the country. At that time I had already worked for three years in the prosecutor’s office and understood that prospects there were very bleak. The work was interesting, but it was turned into a fiction and formalism.

Because I came to the prosecutor’s office from university, where I learned how a prosecutor should protect the law. But at work they tell you: “Code of Criminal Procedure is for fools, and you listen to what the prosecutor says.” And this was said by city prosecutors’ bosses. Maybe a joke, but it’s a very real joke.

The Bureau has high standards of integrity. It’s clear that there are no angels among detectives. Everyone makes mistakes. However, the level of integrity and professionalism cannot be compared with other investigative bodies.

I did not expect and did not think NABU would reach such a level of investigations in the country as we have today. I joined the Bureau as if into the unknown. When I passed the competition and decided to resign from the prosecutor’s office, the deputy prosecutor called me and asked why I was leaving, because, in his words, it is a constitutional organ and it will be dispersed in two years.

And when I became a detective and got a new job, I thought that the hardest part was over. There was such naivety 2015 year. At that time it was only the beginning. And the first cases we worked on brought us back to reality very quickly.

— The foundation of NABU is a team of detectives, while the director’s role is primarily strategic and representative. At the same time, the requirements for the head of an anti-corruption agency must be particularly high. The former Attorney General Ruslan Kravchenko, who may face suspicion of involvement in shielding fraudulent call centers, after fleeing Ukraine published investigative materials about NABU director Semen Kryvonos in his Telegram channel. Do you think Kryvonos should publicly and substantively respond to these charges? And how do you think this situation has affected NABU?

— A lot depends on the choice of where NABU should move. And that choice depends on the team’s leadership. 90 Percent of NABU’s work is detective work, which the director, certainly, can influence through his administrative position. However, his influence is much smaller than that of the prosecutor, for example. And a prosecutor is the key person in any investigation, regardless of whether it is a regular criminal proceeding or a case related to corruption.

NABU will not be led by a person who does not meet the bureau’s own standard of integrity. And now the NABU staff has formed a standard of integrity that, like a living organism, applies immunity procedures and simply spits out of this society those who do not meet the standards.

Take a look at the facts that Kravchenko obtained from somewhere. How much do they affect any investigations by detectives? How do they affect investigations within operations like Carphagen, Midas, or Forest Gamp? In my view, they absolutely do not affect them. Can we find crystal-clear people in all positions in the country? Probably not.

Therefore it does not matter to me to hear Kryvonos’s answer to what the Prosecutor General’s Office accuses him of. What happened — when Kravchenko talked about the investigation by the prosecutor’s office —, on the contrary, removed the possibility for the authorities to pressure the director of NABU or threaten him. And currently the situation is better for both society and Kryvonos than before these facts were made public.

— Ukrainian investigative bodies use various forms of communication with the public in their work. One of them is the publicizing of investigation results. The most questions arise in this public presentation of NABU. Perhaps NABU is criticized more for these videos than for the schemes they uncover and disclose to society in these videos. What did the media side of the Bureau mean to you? And why does NABU do this despite criticism?

— These videos are a mandatory element of NABU’s work. I personally am negative about publishing recordings of non-public investigative (search) actions, because opponents of NABU are not stupid, and they learn from this. However I will tell one story.

There was 2016 year, we had just started working at the Bureau. Detectives come to a raid, knock on the door, from the other side of the apartment someone asks: “Who is it?” Detectives say: “NABU.” The response: “Who?”. Detectives: “National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.” Instead the question is: “What is that?”. And then detectives had to say: “Police, open up.” This is a real dialogue between a detective and the person at the door during a raid.

And today the name “Carpathgen” and the acronym “NABU” are known to everyone. Especially to those involved in corruption cases. This is the path the Bureau has traveled in 10 years.

Once we were “hunting” a very cautious suspect to record his conversations. After several months of work we managed to obtain recordings of only 10 minutes of his conversations, and in 10 minutes he mentioned NABU twice. They fear us that much.

Using these videos, detectives inform the public about what they have found and what they obtained during investigative actions. Because the public is a key stakeholder of NABU. Detectives work for the public. And they simply have no right not to inform the public. If NABU does not do this, the public cannot assess whether it needs such NABU.

And in the summer of 2025, in Kyiv’s Franciya Square, people with cardboard signs demonstrated that they needed such NABU.

About the back office of Ukrzaliznytsia and the role of Kubrakov

— 2020 year there was a discussion between Ukrzaliznytsia and NABU about corruption in the railway sector. Among the participants was a representative of UZ’s supervisory board, Serhiy Leshchenko, who said: “The head of the security department is the second most influential person in the company… The Internal Security Department of UZ… there is essentially a representative from every security vertical.” When you joined UZ, did this scheme described by Leshchenko persist?

— At that time yes. Historically, the Ukrzaliznytsia security department was led by people who had come from various law enforcement agencies. Sometimes it was the police, sometimes the SBU. The department was led by former Shilo leader Eduard Kritsin, a SBU alumnus. He led this structure and built a vertical under himself.

— How did you learn about the back office at UZ and how did it all start?

— Keeping one’s activities secret for a back office is either very difficult or impossible. After all, the back office in procurement needs to interact with suppliers. There are many suppliers, they have different worldviews and different views on processes. Some know how to work only through the back office and only through “rules and spoils.” Others have reached a certain level of development and believe this is an unacceptable situation in our country. The second category are our partners.

In the case of UZ in 2021 year NABU had direct information about a group of people who go around and voice to suppliers the level of kickbacks. Then we began to learn about the vertical of this structure, how it functions and how decisions are made there.

The more stages the back office controls, the stronger it is. In theory the back office can cover and control all procurement stages. The goal of the back office is for the supplier to place their goods and for them to be paid. And a percentage of these funds is passed to the back office as a kickback.

For the back office to function, it must create a “common pot” from which it pays money to the links that make decisions in the entire procurement process. A “link” may receive from 500 to 30 thousand dollars monthly.

— Does the person who receives 500 dollars significantly influence the entire process?

— They influence it, but they may not know about it. Salaries were extremely low, and, receiving supplements in the amount of 500 dollars from their supervisor, a person could not know how the scheme operates in general and that they are part of the back office. There is a pool of people who receive money in envelopes and ensure the required decisions for the back office, and those who perform current work and tasks and do not generate income.

— Could the head of Ukrzaliznytsia not know that a back office is operating at the enterprise?

— It’s possible. Theoretically, it is possible. The back office can operate in conditions of guerrilla warfare.

— But we are not talking about theory; there is a very real case of 180 million hryvnias, and it is hard to sweep under the rug.

— We saw when we conducted the investigation that when back-office members realized they were known, they sent signals to stop the back-office activity altogether. But then they made decisions to restore everything again. Yet the links that provided the back-office activity continued taking money during the periods when they were not allowed to do so.

The global problem of back offices is systemic corruption. At the head of the back office is a person who commands bringing in and generating cash.

— In 2023 year you uncovered the first back-office link in Ukrzaliznytsia, but at the time this case did not attract such publicity. It became widely known when you uncovered the organizer, Shilo?

— Yes, but by 80 percent of procurement branch managers at UZ were under NABU suspicion. We managed to document and prove crimes against almost each of them.

— However after the back-office you uncovered, whose work you stopped, you went to work at UZ in the security department. How did this happen?

— Then everyone understood what scheme we had uncovered.

At that time Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov approached Semen Kryvonos with a proposal to find him some capable people who could restore order in Ukrzaliznytsia’s security. It became clear that the security department was heavily integrated into corrupt processes. This was an example of political will from Kubrakov. He wanted it and did it. They wanted changes, understood what exactly, and did it.

— Do you think the Office of the President understood enough what was happening with Ukrzaliznytsia’s back office to give Kubrakov the go-ahead to change leadership there?

— I find it difficult to answer this question.

— At Energoatom at the time of your investigation, in 2023 year, a back office already existed, and losses to the state in corruption schemes there amounted to 500 million hryvnias. The losses in the Ukrzaliznytsia back office exceed 180 million hryvnias. A notable figure as well. According to NABU materials, schemes at Energoatom were run by Timur Mindich, a relative of the president. According to your materials, at UZ this was Artem Shilo, the adviser to the president’s office. Could Yermak have known about the existence of a back office at UZ?

— He would have known.

The back office that operated at Ukrzaliznytsia in 2021–2023 years was 100% identical to Energoatom’s back office. In both Energoatom and Ukrzaliznytsia there were conditions where court decisions regarding these debtors were halted, and it was impossible to recover funds. Barriers existed at every stage. Kickback percentages were the same. Both had a security subdivision involved in these schemes. In 2023 year we did our homework and eliminated this back office at UZ. Because if we hadn’t dealt with it, 2025 year it could have grown to larger scales.

— So Kubrakov comes to the NABU director and asks about people who could prevent the back office from forming again at UZ. In other words, the former infrastructure minister had such strong political will that he could “cover the table,” perhaps without knowing whether Yermak knew or not?

— The back office was “covered” directly by the Bureau. Probably Kubrakov’s tasks included preventing the creation of a back office of that kind. And perhaps if NABU personnel joined the Ukrzaliznytsia security department, this would not allow a recurrence. Maybe that was the logic. But these are guesses.

One of our first systemic decisions was to eliminate the “security barrier.” Previously, security at UZ could block any procurement, for example, by using an SBU letter about a “Russian trace” in a supplier with a lower price (as was revealed in the investigation into transformer procurement in 2022 year). Now this is no longer the case, because security does not “approve procurements,” but provides professional cautions about existing risks.

Another important step in removing barriers in procurements was significantly narrowing the range of railway-designated goods. This product status required many additional documents that were not easily obtained. As a result, competition in tenders increased and procurement prices fell. This result was achieved after updating UZ’s procurement team, notably with the arrival of Oleksandr Nahod and with the support of UZ leadership, including Oleksandr Pershotsky.

— In October it became known that the organizer of Ukrzaliznytsia’s back office went to an agreement with the investigation. He must pay money and disclose another person. Since Shilo is the organizer in this scheme, he cannot expose himself further. So this must be a suspect in another case. According to ZN.UA, this person is Major General of the SBU Ilya Vituk, accused in a case about buying an apartment at a reduced price. Do you confirm this information about Vituk?

— I cannot either refute or confirm this information, because I do not have it. Yet my experience and logic allow me to suppose that it is Ilya Vituk with a probability 99.

About SBU searches and the Christenko factor

— Last autumn you, your boss Oleksandr Rykovtsev, and three other former NABU detectives who now work in the Ukrzaliznytsia Security Department, were subjected to searches. This was two months after NABU detectives Ruslan Magamedrasulov and Viktor Husarov were searched and detained. The SBU conducted the searches of you and of Magamedrasulov and Husarov. Is this a coincidence?

— In my opinion, there are no such coincidences. We were searched to attempt to drag us into Fedor Khristenko’s case and to create evidence that he supposedly employed us at Ukrzaliznytsia and thus carried out work for the enemy. It seemed that the SBU wanted to regain control over purchases at UZ. At that time it was known that SBU employees came to Ukrzaliznytsia employees and asked why they were not paying certain contractors for delivered goods? What powers does the SBU exercise at that moment?

— How did the searches end? Because a year has passed.

— We were not even interrogated. During the search I was handed three summonses to be questioned. The interrogation did not take place because the investigator delayed it each time. Moreover, my colleagues sent motions to interrogate them as witnesses. There was no response.

— The motion for the search was signed by former Prosecutor General Kravchenko. You are not a special subject, because you are no longer a detective, so why would the Prosecutor General sign it? In your view, what is the essence of the Prosecutor General’s involvement in these actions?

— Directly with this prosecutor I studied at Kharkiv Law Academy in the same cohort. We were on different faculties, but since there were few students, our faculties were combined for joint lectures.

There is no procedural reason for the Prosecutor General’s signature there. His signature did not cause me any emotions, but it created the impression that this was not an ordinary raid. I decided that it was related to an attack on NABU, because I had no other explanation. The Prosecutor General does not approve ordinary motions for raids.

— Your head, also a former NABU detective, Oleksandr Rykovtsev, believes that since July 2025 year there is a systematic campaign of pressure on NABU detectives, SAP prosecutors and people involved in investigating top corruption. He has written official letters to the head of the SBU and the Prosecutor General. It turns out you found yourself in a situation with no one to protect you except the public.

— We only have our reputation. The public will not directly protect us. In such cases, the judiciary is key. However the highest level of human rights protection in the judicial chain currently lies with VAKS. This is where cases are pursued, where the accused have strong lawyers. For the corrupt, VAKS works, and for everyone else — the Pechersky Court, where it’s not a legal system but a theater of the absurd.