Acting Prosecutor General Explained What's Wrong with Plea Agreements

Acting Prosecutor General Anton Kovalskyi stated that prosecutors’ work is insufficiently effective, stressing that the primary priority should be court verdicts, not just high-profile arrests and announcements of suspicions. This is mentioned in the Maincom article “Staff Purge and the Closure of the Court-Apartment Tour Agency. Acting Prosecutor General Anton Kovalskyi on His First Steps.”

Kovalskyi emphasized that the statistics of real prison terms for corruption are currently extremely unsatisfactory, as most such cases end with fines, probation terms, or plea agreements without real imprisonment.

Kovalskyi noted that society wrongly perceives plea deals as a way to avoid prison. According to him, the law allows entering into agreements with a reduced sentence (for example, four years in prison instead of nine), and this practice should be offered more actively to defendants.

In addition, the acting prosecutor general urged speeding up case review times in courts and promptly making decisions—from issuing verdicts (including in corruption cases and crimes against national security) to closing cases where elements of a crime are not proven.

As an example of effective work, he cited the case of a community head in Khmelnytskyi region: a suspicion of embezzlement was issued in July 2025 year, and there is now an appellate ruling for 8 years in prison. In total, Ukraine registers about 500 thousand criminal cases each year.

Earlier, the prosecutor of Khmelnytskyi region, who is acting as the head of the General Prosecutor’s Office, Anton Kovalskyi, publicly dissociated himself from ties to the influential Chernivtsi businessman Illia Pavlyk, about which the media had previously reported.

“You know, in life people always try to label others. When I worked in the Vinnytsia regional prosecutor’s office, the institution was led by Viacheslav Sokolovyi. People then said that Kovalskyi was Sokolovyi’s man. When I worked in Bukovina, I was connected with the then deputy prosecutor general Ihor Musteza. They also said that my candidacy was supposedly recommended by Musteza by entrepreneur Illia Pavlyk. Well, I have never met this Pavlyk in my life. I would tell how Pavlyk ‘helped’ me work in Chernivtsi, but I won’t…,” the acting prosecutor general emphasized.

As The Maincom reported, Anton Kovalskyi is from Vinnytsia. He has worked in the prosecutor’s office since 2010 year. In September 2020 year he took the position of deputy head of the Vinnytsia regional prosecutor’s office, and later headed the Chernivtsi regional prosecutor’s office. He later became the prosecutor of Khmelnytskyi region.

After the “Carthage” corruption scandal, Kovalskyi headed the Office of the General Prosecutor — currently in an acting capacity. He said that the offer to temporarily lead the Office of the General Prosecutor came to him during a personal conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The head of state gave him two tasks: ensure stable operation of the Office of the General Prosecutor and purge the system of unworthy people.