78 people applied for the position of director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, but only 22 candidates reached the stage with a practical task. Half of them are active NABU employees. There are also representatives of the State Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Prosecutor General, and some other people are not from the system.
On January 28, the candidates completed the practical task. Ahead of the interview for integrity and professional compliance.
Which of the candidates has a dubious fortune, whose parents bought an apartment and who is friends with the leadership of the President’s Office – in the material hromadske.
What is now with NABU?
Over the past months, NABU and SAPO have handed a lot of suspicions to officials and deputies. Detained acting Minister for the Development of Communities and Territories Vasily Lozinsky because of a bribe of 400 thousand dollars, completed the investigation of the second episode of the Rotterdam + formula and announced new suspicions to 15 involved, handed suspicions to MPs from the Servant of the People Yuriy Kamelchuk and Volodymyr Gevko due to the introduction inaccurate information.
Now anti-corruption organizations are carefully monitoring the competition so that someone close to the authorities is not chosen as the leader, who can question the independence of NABU.
NABU competition: Vitaliy Vlasyuk
Vitaliy Vlasyuk – Deputy Head of the Kyiv OVA. His former leader Alexey Kuleba recently became Deputy Head of the Office of the President. The candidate says that he maintains friendly relations with Kuleba, according to Vitali Klitschko, he hit to the Kyiv authorities thanks to the head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak. Vlasyuk’s brother, Vladislav, an adviser to the President’s Office, is now the secretary of the Yermak-McFaul international working group on strengthening sanctions.
However, the candidate does not see a potential conflict of interest in this:The head of NABU does not have any procedural authority to stop the proceedings, but represents the bureau in relations with the Cabinet of Ministers, the Verkhovna Rada and other state bodies. This is what I will be doing. Not by trying to influence detectives or instructing something not to investigate. I’ll immediately get out of office if I get caught doing this.”.
Elena Shcherban, head of the legal department of the Center for Combating Corruption, has a different opinion. She believes that Vlasyuk’s background casts doubt on his political neutrality. In addition, the head of the NABU has procedural powers related to the criminal process.
“The director of the bureau can request files from other law enforcement agencies to NABU. That is, it directly concerns criminal proceedings. The director has the right to immediately seize property in extremely urgent cases. For example, if such cases will concern some related persons or persons important to him, then he may not make such a decision. In their investigations, NABU detectives are indeed independent, but the director can dismiss detectives, and therefore influence their work through administrative powers”, Shcherban explains.
Previously, Vlasyuk worked as a lawyer. In 2021, on his Facebook, he wished a happy birthday to Vitaly Serdyuk, a lawyer for fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych, citing his work defending the politician as “an example of professionalism.”
Now, when asked about that already deleted message, he reacts like this: “I can not subjectively evaluate the work of my colleague? Say: “Yes, well done! Cool. The tactics you chose were the right ones. It was interesting to do it all.” Do I have the right as a professional to express such a view?
It is worth recalling that the lawyers of the Aver Lex company, where Vitaly Serdyuk works, dragged out and disrupted the trial of Yanukovych. They did not come to the meetings, they simply left the courtroom or interrupted the prosecutor during the debate.
The fact that Vlasyuk supports this practice of his colleagues is a red flag for the commission, Oksana Shtogrin, legal adviser at Transparency International, believes.
“The question arises – how effective can he be as the leader of an anti-corruption body if he condones such behavior on the part of lawyers, especially not someone, but Yanukovych,” she says.
NABU contest: Semyon Krivonos
This is not the first time Semyon Krivonos has applied for the position of head of the anti-corruption agency. In 2016, he could become the director of the Odessa branch of NABU, but he did not receive the position. During the competition, a scandal erupted. Journalists of Slidstvo.Info discoveredthat, despite insignificant income, he became the owner of an apartment near Kyiv, which cost more than 3 million hryvnia, as well as two hectares of land in the Obukhov district.
Krivonos then explained that at the time of the purchase he was not a civil servant, and the money for an apartment and land was given to him by his parents working in the agricultural business. However, after a journalistic investigation, he withdrew his candidacy from the competition and resigned, although in fact he was the winner.
Now he explains this decision as follows: “It was a mistake. I wasn’t ready. I was young and never faced media pressure. That is, I felt psychological pressure.”
Kryvonos also provided us with a contract for the sale of the apartment, which indicates that its cost is 399 thousand hryvnia – much less than the journalists previously claimed (according to the 2011 exchange rate, this is about 50 thousand dollars, – ed.).
Krivonos has been heading the State Inspectorate for Architecture and Urban Planning since 2021. After his appointment to this post, Mikheil Saakashvili wrote fast on Facebook, in which he claimed that the candidacy of Krivonos during the competition was under the protection of the head of the Presidential Office Andrey Yermak and the former head of the Ministry of Regional Development Alexei Chernyshev.
When asked what connects him with the Office of the President, Krivonos replies: “There is no connection to the OP. What Mikheil writes about Yermak – Mikheil is a political figure, I cannot comment on this. I can say that the decision on my appointment was made by Alexei Chernyshev based on the results of the interview“.
Krivonos does not deny that he is friends with the Deputy Head of the President’s Office Oleksiy Kuleba. Krivonos’ wife was the head of the support department for Kuleba when he worked as the first deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration.
“I communicate with people’s deputies, and with members of the government, and with ministers. This will not affect my work in any way if I am elected director of NABU”, Krivonos assures.
NABU contest: Oleksandr Vikul
The declaration of Oleksandr Vikul, prosecutor from the Vinnytsia region, shows significant savings – almost 49 thousand euros.
To our question about the origin of the funds, he replied: “Mother saved up money for 20 years abroad. I don’t want to detail who she works for.“.
The candidate for the post of head of NABU adds that the mother earned money by physical labor. However, such an answer is not enough for anti-corruption activists.
“This story certainly does not give the candidate pluses. If you want to become director of NABU and declare such funds, then in principle you should explain publicly where they came from and confirm this“, – says the head of the legal department of the Center for Combating Corruption Elena Shcherban
In addition, on Facebook Vikul is divided philosophical considerations about the absence of corruption in Ukraine as such.
He explains his statements as follows:In my opinion, there is corruption to a certain extent, but not to the extent that they talk about it. I have worked with many, and I can personally assess the level of corruption and the level of honesty. I’m sure there are people who have never done this.“.
That is, the candidate believes that the problem of corruption in Ukraine is “overblown”, but he is applying for the position of director of the anti-corruption body. Legal adviser to Transparency International Oksana Shtogrin considers this position to be naive.
“One person cannot assess the level of corruption in the entire state. The role of the director of NABU is to determine the future of this body. If a candidate for a position says that we do not have a lot of corruption, we have a lot of honest civil servants based on some personal experience, this may indicate that this person is not competent enough“, says the expert.
NABU contest: Ruslan Kravchenko
Kravchenko was the prosecutor in the Yanukovych case. He is currently the head of the Buchansk District Prosecutor’s Office. And earlier he worked in the military prosecutor’s office under the leadership of Anatoly Matios. The latter was dismissed from his post in September 2019, and the body of military justice itself was dissolved. The prosecutor’s office is remembered for a number of failures during his leadership. In particular, the Matios department opened three cases of embezzlement in Ukroboronprom in one year, but all of them did not affect the main defendants – Oleg Gladkovsky and his partners Vitaly Zhukov and Andriy Rogoza.
“Kravchenko worked for a long time in the military prosecutor’s office under the direction of Matios. But the mere fact of meeting or working together is not a sign of dishonesty.”, – says the people’s deputy from the party “Voice”, the first deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada committee on corruption policy Yaroslav Yurchyshyn.
He notes that the commission should conduct an in-depth analysis of the candidate’s activities and draw appropriate conclusions.
Kravchenko’s 2021 declaration states that he and his wife, who works as the head of the translation department at the Prosecutor General’s Office, together have $53,000 in cash.
We asked the candidate about the origin of these funds, this is what he replied: “I started to declare in 2015, and every year there was a good salary. Both me and my wife. That is, we can delay. In 2020, I was discharged from military service with more than 10 years of service and received financial assistance, which at that time was about 20 thousand dollars“.
NABU Competition: Veronika Plotnikova
The only woman among the applicants is Veronika Plotnikova, Head of the Department for Implementing the Practice of the European Court of Human Rights in the Prosecution Activities of the National Academy of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine. On the government website so far didn’t show up her declaration, although the candidate claims to have filed the document.
We asked her what she would focus on if she won, and this is what she says:The main thing here is not to negate the work that is now, and to do everything possible so that top officials cannot hide behind the conditions of martial law. Determine for yourself the vector of what is happening in our area, where people are involved in this (in the purchases received – ed.) and sometimes cover up their transactions behind big slogans“.
What hindered the election of the head of NABU?
The only full-fledged director of NABU for the entire time of its existence was Artem Sytnik. He was in office for seven years – from the moment the body was formed until April 12, 2022. Since then, in NABU – acting. director, former first deputy Sytnik Gizo Uglava.
Before the most full-scale invasion, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted an order that a member of the commission for the election of the head of the SAPO cannot be at the same time in the commission for the election of the head of NABU. Such a member turned out to be an independent member of the commission, Drago Kos. At the time, the Anti-Corruption Action Center suspected that the authorities were trying to disrupt the independent competition in this way.
The competition commission, consisting of Kos, was able to start work only in August 2022. And now she had to check the candidates for integrity and conduct an interview with them. They will ask about the results of the investigations they conducted, find out what specific skills they have.
Three out of 22 will be chosen. And then – the decision is up to the Cabinet. And anti-corruption organizations do not really like this fact, because the authorities always have a temptation to choose the most loyal candidate.
Evgeny Shulgat