The large-scale attack by nearly all of the country’s law enforcement agencies against NABU can be divided into two distinct parts: a genuine attempt to remove questionable figures from the Bureau, and a broader effort to use this as a pretext for a major discrediting campaign against the entire anti-corruption bloc.
Roman Romaniuk and Angelina Strashkulych investigate for Ukrainska Pravda.
And, as suggested by Daria Kaleniuk, Executive Director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, another possible goal is to gain access to classified NABU/SAPO data:
“The SBU obtained access to the department where materials containing state secrets are stored. These may include information about agents cooperating with NABU, whistleblowers from various government bodies, or documents indicating the Bureau’s intentions to investigate certain actions,” the activist explained in an interview with NV.
Back on July 10, Ukrainska Pravda spoke with several senior officials from NABU and SAPO, during which one of them remarked:
“If the public fails to push through the completion of the ESBU selection process, the next attack will immediately target NABU and SAPO.”
As if to confirm the likelihood of that prediction, the very next day — July 11 — law enforcement officers from the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) carried out a brutal raid against anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin.
Just a few days later, Telegram channels affiliated with the Presidential Office launched a smear campaign targeting the head of the political department of one of the country’s last independent media outlets, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia — Inna Vedernikova — and her husband.
A week after the conversation mentioned above, on July 17, the new Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko made it clear in parliament that the winner of the competition for the head of the Bureau of Economic Security would not be appointed.
And just four days later, law enforcement came to NABU employees with search warrants.
The nature of the suspicions against the detectives has been described in detail above. If even part of the “Russian” allegations is true, it’s clear that NABU leadership should be interested in purging its ranks of “Russian moles” and rooting out infiltrators – much like it was once a matter of honor for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to rid itself of controversial figures such as the former head of internal security, General Andriy Naumov, the head of the SBU in Crimea, Oleh Kulinich, or the head of the anti-terrorist department, Dmytro Koziura.
However, the majority of arrests and searches targeting NABU detectives suggest that discrediting the agency is one of the main goals in this entire operation.
When old traffic accident cases – which have already been under investigation for four years – are suddenly presented as part of a “major revelation,” it gives the impression that the goal is to create a sense of a large-scale operation and to paralyze the work of as many NABU employees as possible.
According to UP’s sources in the Prosecutor General’s Office, immediately after the appointment of the new Prosecutor General, Kravchenko, he requested all case files involving NABU and SAPO personnel. A separate group of prosecutors quickly reviewed them. At the same time, media preparations for the campaign against NABU were underway.
“They came with search warrants today and swept up everything they themselves had been writing about the detectives on Telegram. The media buildup lasted two weeks, so we knew something was coming. And now they’ve come — some had their laptops and phones seized, some were detained, others were simply beaten.
One person had his eyes pried open with fingers so they could unlock his phone using Face ID,” a NABU source told Ukrainska Pravda.
“Overall, we think this was just a preemptive move because they found out that NABU was preparing to issue a notice of suspicion to Tymur Mindich (co-owner of Kvartal 95 Studio – UP),” added a well-informed source in the anti-corruption agencies.
The presented cases are also meant to work in the media space, targeting various “audiences.” The “cannabis trade” provides grounds to accuse someone of aiding the aggressor, which in turn allows the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to take over the case.
What remains when the dust settles after the first day of an all-out anti-corruption war?
“All of this is being created to build an informational backdrop justifying an attack on NABU,” says Daria Kaleniuk, Executive Director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center. In her view, the institution will continue to be discredited, and both ordinary detectives and the leadership of NABU and SAPO will keep facing pressure to force anti-corruption officers to “follow all instructions from the President’s Office.”
As Oleksa Shalaysky, co-founder of the key anti-corruption outlet Nashi Hroshi, aptly put it, law enforcement has already used the same approach on hundreds of entrepreneurs as they are now applying to NABU detectives: “raids, pre-trial detention, asset seizures, frozen accounts, etc., with no real progress toward bringing the case to court.” Because the goal is not justice.
At the time of the mass raids, the heads of both anti-corruption agencies were on a work trip to London. They already understood, even as they were leaving, that they would return to a completely different political context. According to Ukrainska Pravda sources, both Kryvonos and Klymenko were flagged at the border with so-called “alerts” — signals indicating a travel ban.
Yet somehow, after hours of clarifications and phone calls to Kyiv, Kryvonos and Klymenko were allowed to leave the country. At the time of publication, they were reportedly on their way back, having cut the trip short.
“What’s next? It’s not out of the question that we’ll soon see a similarly ‘well-founded’ suspicion brought against the head of NABU himself. Accusations of his alleged involvement in some kind of ‘scheme’ have already been circulating online,” one source noted.
And we likely won’t have to wait long for an answer. There’s a strong possibility that a draft law will soon appear in Parliament calling for the immediate re-certification of the Bureau of “traitors, murderers, and corrupt officials.” And chances are, it won’t take long to gather votes for it – especially among NABU’s primary “clients.”
It’s also worth noting that just this morning, draft law No. 12414 appeared in the Verkhovna Rada – a bill through which Zelenskyy is dismantling the key anti-corruption achievements of the Revolution of Dignity.
Tags: nabu SAPO
