Facts and conclusions from the Bihus.info investigation into leaks in case of "Big Construction" curators Holyk, Birkadze and NABU officers Uglava and Polyuga

Facts and conclusions from the Bigus.info investigation into the leaks in the case of "Big Construction" curators Yuriy Holyk and Georgiy Birkadze, as well as NABU employees Gizo Uglava and Valeriy Polyuga

So, what I saw in the investigation:

The NABU was investigating corruption in the construction of roads during the war in the Dnipropetrovsk region, with businessman Yuriy Holyk, who has an office in the Office of the President of Ukraine and is one of the curators of the Presidential "Big Construction" project, being a person of interest. Holyk was detained by the NABU and his two work phones were seized. The phones were opened by NABU specialists, but all information was cleared, meaning that Holyk was warned.
During the examination of Holyk's phones, it turned out that the businessman had not cleared the image cache in his browser (according to sources, about 2,000 screenshots of correspondence with various people were found). Thus, the screenshots that Holyk took from his correspondence with businessman Giorgi Birkadze, who also has an office in the Presidential Office and is also Holyk's partner in the "Big Construction" project, were revealed. Birkadze is widely known as a regular guest on TeleMarathon, where he praises the president and his entourage. Birkadze sent Holyk messages with information from his source in the NABU concerning the "Big Construction". These screenshots became the basis for an investigation into the leakage of information from NABU. As part of the investigation, Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Oleksandr Klymenko searched the home of NABU detective Valeriy Polyuga.
Birkadze was in contact with NABU Deputy Director Gizo Uglava. There is no direct evidence in the investigation that Uglava was the author of the messages on Holyk's phone. However, analysing the context, we can assume that several of Birkadze's messages could have been information from Uglava. The connection between the screenshots on Holyk's phone and Uglava was confirmed to journalists by former Deputy Prime Minister O. Kubrakov.
Birkadze was in contact with detective Valeriy Polyuga, who works in an undercover detective unit. However, the investigation has not found any direct or indirect evidence that Valeriy Polyuga or the detective unit to which Polyuga belongs was involved in the leak. The two screenshots, whose author in the correspondence is "Valera the Japanese", do not contain proprietary information.
Yuriy Holyk did not provide journalists with explanations and evaded commenting on the leak and the investigation (as it turned out, at the time of publication, Holyk had left the country, according to UP, as a volunteer under the "Shlyakh" system). Giorgi Birkadze met with journalists, but not to have an honest conversation, but to provoke a scandal and conflict, so Birkadze was deliberately rude and insulting to journalists. This shows that the Office of the President has chosen an intellectually and morally low person to be one of the curators of the "Big Construction", but also that Birkadze lacks arguments to defend himself.

Conclusions:

The investigation into the alleged leakage of information from Gizo Uglava has grounds and should be properly assessed by both the SAPO and the NABU's internal investigation. However, it is premature to say that all these screens are from Uglava and to blame this whole story on him alone. We need the conclusions of the internal investigation, and it is very important that Uglava talks about the nature of his relationship with Birkadze and provides his phones for verification. I do not believe that Uglava should resign immediately, I am convinced that first of all there should be institutional actions - an internal investigation, and personnel decisions should be made after the conclusions of the investigation and detailed testimony of Uglava. This should happen in the near future. It is NABU that has to show its institutional capacity and demonstrate transparency and adequacy of response. And NABU has big problems with this now.
The contacts between Birkadze and detective Valeriy Polyuga may be the basis for an internal investigation. But I don't understand why the head of the SAPO, Klymenko, authorised the search of Polyuga's place and actually exposed and discredited the activities of the undercover detectives, as there are no valid grounds for initiating a criminal case against Polyuga in the screenshots.
The investigation into the Golik-Birkadze case requires investigative actions not only by the NABU leadership. The Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the High Anti-Corruption Court may also be involved in the leaks. The deputy head of the SAPO, Andriy Senyuk, is a man of the deputy head of the Presidential Office, Oleh Tatarov, and at the prosecutor's office, Senyuk handled a significant number of the most odious criminal cases commissioned by the Presidential Office, for example, against NABU informant Yevhen Shevchenko. Therefore, the SAPO leadership should certainly be among the suspects in the leak, as well as the NABU leadership.
Kubrakov's dismissal from the post of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure at the initiative of President Zelenskyy and the head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, is linked to his cooperation with Western partners and his conflict with the office's appointed supervisor of the "Big Construction", Yuriy Holyk. The conflict between Holyk and Kubrakov is mentioned in the correspondence between Holyk and Birkadze. That is why our Western partners and the US and EU embassies are paying such close attention to the investigation into Holyk and the leakage of information in the case.
The President's Office has created a shadowy scheme to control the funds that Western countries allocate for Ukraine's recovery with the help of a group of "curators" and "watchers" whom our partners do not trust. This scheme discredits Ukraine and creates major corruption risks, and if Yermak and Zelenskyy do not eliminate this shameful scheme themselves, the pressure on anti-corruption bodies and civil society organisations to eliminate it will increase, and the number of scandals and criminal cases will grow.

Yuriy Butusov, Censor. NET