Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) have exposed a criminal organisation whose members are accused of systematically granting unlawful advantages to senior officials of the security agencies so that fraudulent call centres and other illegal businesses could operate undisturbed. NABU announced this on Wednesday, 4 November, in its Telegram channel, as reported by the news agency Ukrinform.
The investigators named the operation “Carthage”. According to the investigation, “acting senior officials of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), the National Police, the Prosecutor General’s Office and representatives of the criminal milieu” were involved in the offences, NABU stated. The agency said it would provide further details of the operation later.
An SSU general is said to have threatened investigators with a weapon
Earlier that same morning, NABU had already reported that a senior SSU officer was blocking a search by NABU detectives. The officer was threatening to use a firearm and was not allowing the investigators access to the search site, the statement said. According to the statement, the search was carried out on the basis of a decision by the investigating judge at the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC). SSU special forces had also arrived at the site.
The investigative journalist Mykhailo Tkach reported, citing sources in the law enforcement agencies, that the officer was SSU General Serhii Duka, as TSN reports. NABU investigators had also conducted searches at the head of the SSU’s Main Directorate for Internal Security, Colonel Anton Kravchuk. This information comes from sources and has not yet been officially confirmed.
The case concerning the prosecutor general and the call centres
Operation “Carthage” has been the subject of investigation for weeks. As early as 4 September, it became known that NABU and SAP had uncovered, as part of the operation, a criminal organisation which, according to the investigators’ findings, was led by an official of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Those involved are linked to the “protection” of a network of fraudulent call centres and to the legalisation of assets. The case files show that the official is the deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s department for international cooperation, Serhii Kropyva. According to the investigation, in mid-2025 he formed and led an organisation from senior structural units of the Prosecutor General’s Office and brought prosecutors and people close to him into it.
According to NABU and SAP, members of the organisation systematically received unlawful advantages in return for not obstructing the activities of so-called call centres that defrauded Ukrainian citizens and foreigners. According to the investigators’ version, the proceeds were legalised through the purchase of real estate, jewellery and other valuable property worth more than 20 million hryvnias. A further more than 10 million hryvnias are said to have been deposited by those involved into the accounts of people close to them and declared as income from business activity.
On 4 September, the Prosecutor General’s Office stated that the official whose possible involvement in unlawful activities connected with fraudulent call centres was being examined had been suspended from his duties for the duration of the pre-trial investigation. On Sunday, 6 September, the HACC ordered pre-trial detention for Kropyva, with an alternative of 120 million hryvnias bail. On 7 September, the court also imposed detention measures on Kropyva’s partner, Yelyzaveta Ivakhnenko, and his driver, Serhii Kutsyi. On 8 September, the HACC took the lawyer Oleksandr Dydych into custody – a relative and authorised representative of Kropyva. Dydych is regarded as a confidant of Kropyva; the lawyer’s wife, Viktoriia Dydych, is Kropyva’s sister. Dydych is suspected of participation in a criminal organisation and of legalising property obtained through criminal offences.
Kropyva loses his post, the disciplinary commission reviews the case
Acting Prosecutor General Anton Koval skyi said on Monday, 2 November, in an interview with the public broadcaster Suspilne that the official investigation into Kropyva had been completed. It had been established that he had committed a disciplinary offence; he personally had registered criminal proceedings against Kropyva and transferred the investigation to the State Bureau of Investigation (DBR). The investigation had also found that Kropyva had reported being at his place of duty but could in fact have been in Bukovel. According to Kovalskyi, on his first working day he abolished the post Kropyva had held – the position of deputy head of the department for international cooperation. On the basis of the results of the official investigation, he had turned to the Prosecutor’s Office’s supervisory and disciplinary commission regarding Kropyva, which could dismiss him from the prosecutor’s service after review. “Kropyva is a classic example of a person who entered the prosecutor’s office system through some unclear connections and not because of his professional qualities,” Kovalskyi said.
Another backdrop is the change at the head of the Prosecutor General’s Office. The then Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned on 7 September; on 15 September, parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, approved his resignation with 317 votes, and President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on his dismissal the same day. On 17 September, Anton Kovalskyi, head of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast Prosecutor’s Office, became acting Prosecutor General. On 9 October, Kovalskyi stated that the Prosecutor General’s Office was investigating the circumstances of Kravchenko’s departure from Ukraine and the actions of officials in connection with Operation “Carthage”.
As the English-language news outlet The New Voice of Ukraine reported on Friday, 30 October, citing SAP, the HACC extended the pre-trial detention of three suspects by two months while at the same time reducing the bail amounts: for Kropyva from 120 to 93 million hryvnias, for Ivakhnenko from 20 to 15 million and for the confidant from 15 to 11.6 million hryvnias.
What the new searches mean
The investigation is thus expanding from the Prosecutor General’s Office to the Security Service and the National Police. Should the information about the searches at SSU General Duka and Colonel Kravchuk be confirmed, the affair would no longer stand merely for corruption in the prosecutor’s office but for a network that, according to the investigators, reaches into the leadership of the security agencies. NABU has announced further details; so far the agency has not named any officials officially.
Editor’s note: The attribution of the searches to Serhii Duka and Anton Kravchuk is based on sources cited by the journalist Mykhailo Tkach and TSN; there is no official confirmation from NABU.
