In the second part of Operation “Karfagen”, Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities have served notices of suspicion on the first five suspects of a new criminal organisation with at least twelve members – by their own account only a fraction of the investigation. This was stated by the head of the detective unit of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Oleksandr Abakumov, on Monday, 9 November, in a post on social media, as reported by the news outlet NV.
“We have shown only what we could show without harming the interests of the investigation. A substantial part of the materials cannot be published for now. And believe me: the darkest part of this corruption iceberg remains under water,” NV quotes from Abakumov’s post. The NABU representative also published the same text as a column on the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
Abakumov describes corruption in Ukraine as a system in which organised crime buys state protection and corrupt officials receive money and influence in return. Law-enforcement powers are then not used to combat crime but to serve it – to persecute competitors and to exert pressure on entrepreneurs, journalists, activists and even on other security forces who refuse to play by the rules.
What the second part of the operation showed
According to Abakumov, the second part of the operation showed how, according to the investigators’ version, a system for shielding dozens of fraudulent call centres operated and how representatives of the criminal milieu cooperated with security agencies. Attacks on people who resisted the criminal business were also discussed, he said.
The background reaches back to November: on Wednesday, 4 November, NABU and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) said they had uncovered a drug syndicate with a Russian trace that, according to the investigation’s version, operated under the protection of officials of the SBU security service and the National Police. Those involved are accused of running fraudulent call centres, trading in drugs and producing counterfeit cigarettes and foreign currency. On the same day, according to Ukrainska Pravda and Babel, NABU detectives detained SBU General Serhii Duka, along with National Police officials Volodymyr Tsenov and Oleksandr Demianchuk and the founder of a boxing club, Vitalii Rybalka. The SBU official Oleksandr Poklad dismissed two senior officers of the service who appear in the case.
On Thursday, 5 November, NABU and SAP reported the suspicion against five members of the group. The High Anti-Corruption Court remanded Rybalka, nicknamed “Boxer”, in custody without bail; according to NV, Tsenov received 60 days of arrest with the alternative of bail of 15 million hryvnias. The following day, the court ordered pre-trial detention without the possibility of bail for Demianchuk, the suspect nicknamed “Consultant”.
On Friday, 6 November, SAP prosecutor Mykola Karas said that during the search at Duka’s premises, Duka and his armed guards had resisted the detectives, and the general had spent two hours destroying evidence, including phones, with an axe. NABU later published photos of the destroyed phones. According to the bureau, a criminal case was opened over the resistance to the detectives, which the State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) is handling.
Why the agency speaks of “chemotherapy”
According to Abakumov, NABU has set itself the goal of eradicating systemic corruption as a phenomenon and destroying the mechanisms that allow crime to penetrate state institutions. He describes his agency as a kind of “anti-corruption chemotherapy” that must burn out metastases, even if the treatment triggers fierce resistance. Operation “Karfagen” continues, and NABU wants to see the investigation through to the end.
The case has now also reached the political debate. The parliamentary leader of the European Solidarity party and former president Petro Poroshenko said on Friday, 6 November, in a video address that the exposure by the anti-corruption authorities had shocked Ukraine’s Western allies. “Let’s call things by their name: this is no longer corruption – this is the mafia, a mafia state,” Poroshenko said, according to a report by the news agency Interfax-Ukraine. He referred to the EU enlargement report, which he said was published in Brussels, and to talks with EU commissioners and in the European Parliament. No one would allow the reform of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the SBU and the State Bureau of Investigation to be circumvented; any trickery would risk halting European integration.
According to Poroshenko, European Solidarity intends to submit a package of changes to the Verkhovna Rada: a reform of the State Bureau of Investigation, a new procedure for appointing the Prosecutor General, a reform of the SBU, a comprehensive review of access to state databases and surveillance cameras, state protection for threatened journalists, activists and veterans, and a temporary investigative commission on the “Karfagen” case.
Editor’s note: The investigations are ongoing, and the allegations have not been established in court. The account of events is based on statements by NABU, SAP and media reports.
