NABU-leaks: why people’s deputies came to Kryvonos and what happened to Uhlava
On Monday, July 15, people’s deputies from the Anti-Corruption Committee held an offsite meeting of the committee at the NABU. This happened after NABU Director Semen Kryvonos failed to attend a parliamentary meeting of the committee a month earlier, where the situation with leaks of investigation materials from the bureau and abuse of office by certain individuals was to be considered. Deputy Director Hizo Uhlava may be involved.
This story began publicly almost 2 months ago.
On 22 May, the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the National Police searched the home of an employee of one of the NABU units. The case concerned detective Valerii Poliuha of the secret department and leaks of materials in the case involving the curator of the Big Construction, Yurii Holyk.
The phone was seized as part of the Reznichenko/Holyk case regarding the tenders won by Budinvest Engineering LLC for road repairs in the Dnipropetrovsk region worth over UAH 1.5 billion.
As the sources explained at the time, detectives found photos from Holyk's phone in open archives that showed that someone had leaked him materials from investigative actions against him.
Almost simultaneously, a source reported that none other than long-time NABU deputy director Hizo Uhlava may have been involved in the leak.
These suspicions were prompted by screenshots of correspondence from Hiorhi Birkadze, the former head of the Brovary District State Administration, who sent Holyk some information about the investigation and mentioned a certain 'zema'. Given that Birkadze is a Georgian, it was logical to assume that it was Uhlava.
On 24 May, two days after the searches, Uhlava was suspended from his duties.
ZN.UA described in detail the story of leaks to the NABU, pointing out that three people had been texting each other on the phone seized from Yurii Holyk since 2021.
One of these people was Detective Poliuha and the other was Birkadze, but the third figure in the correspondence was a mysterious "Japanese". This is how this person is signed on the screenshots. Politicians have been calling NABU employees "Japanese" by an inexplicable tradition since Poroshenko's time.
"From the context of the correspondence, it is clear that this is a person who has full information about all the cases, supervised all the units, and he had to take permission to take actions and obtain resources for the investigation," a source in the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office told ZN.UA.
In early June, Bihus.info published an investigation into who could have leaked information to the Big Construction supervisor. Investigative journalist Denys Bihus received photos from Yurii Holyk's phone and, based on them, suggested that Birkadze's information could have been leaked by one of the NABU's senior officials, possibly Uhlava.
According to the journalist, the only inconsistency in this version is that Uhlava never writes long messages. He literally writes a couple of words, but here there were whole paragraphs. Moreover, they were spelled very well.
In a commentary to Bihus, Birkadze "confided" that he was engaged in "creativity" and rewrote such messages. Theoretically, he was in contact with a detective of the D-2 unit, and therefore could have received information without Uhlava.
However, this did not completely remove suspicions from the NABU deputy director.
Moreover, in fact, they were only a part of the accusations against him, which were voiced by the AntAC in recent months, and then at a meeting of the parliamentary committee they were voiced as unanswered questions by Anastasiia Radina. Unanswered because the NABU director did not come to the committee then.
What was the essence of the AntAC's claims to the Uhlava? In fact, it was an accumulation of power.
The fact is that after the dismissal of the former head of the Main Detective Unit, Andrii Kaluzhynskyi, from the NABU, the bureau began a reform. As a result, "it was decided to create four new detectives out of the Main Detective Unit, and competitions are still ongoing for the positions of their heads. But they all have to be subordinate to the Uhlava. Without the intermediate link of a single manager (head of the Main Detective Unit), who must be a detective and, according to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), the head of the pre-trial investigation body."
However, neither Kryvonos nor Uhlava have such powers by law. In addition, this broke the concept of independence of detectives from the administrative leadership of the Bureau, which was actually one of the pillars of independence and effectiveness of this body.
At the same time, the administrative management should not have had access to the case file at all.
In fact, the author of the article, Olena Shcherban, warned that such an accumulation of investigation materials by the NABU leadership could lead to undesirable leaks. As an example, she cited the publication of the list of judges from the searches in Vsevolod Kniazev's office, as well as the fact that the Cabinet of Ministers miraculously dismissed the leadership of the State Special Communications Service just a few hours before NABU served them with a suspicion of misappropriation of more than UAH 62 million.
Other comments about too much power in the hands of the Uhlava included the fact that it is the first deputy director who heads the competition commission, on which the career development of detectives depends, and the disciplinary commission, which is responsible for punishing them in case of violations.
In addition, Uhlava concentrated the resources of operational and technical management, meaning that he could influence the processes of covert investigative activities.
At the same time, Olena Shcherban drew attention to the fact that the positions of deputy directors of the NABU are the only ones that do not require open competitive selection. And Uhlava has been in his position for 10 years, which in principle allowed him to accumulate unlimited power.
After the information about Uhlava's possible involvement in the leak of the investigation materials to Holyk appeared, the AntAC demanded that NABU Director Semen Kryvonos conduct an internal investigation. Instead, Kryvonos said that the materials provided to him were the basis for a pre-trial investigation.
Over the past months, the AntAC has repeatedly made statements that the NABU Director is actually sabotaging the dismissal of his deputy.
And Kryvonos was supposed to give answers to the voiced claims at a meeting of the parliamentary committee a month ago. But just the day before, a story by UP journalist Mykhailo Tkach reported that the NABU director himself could have blocked certain investigative actions against Naftogaz CEO Oleksii Chernyshov.
Kryvonos did not come to the committee then. He claimed that he could not disclose the investigation materials.
Therefore, on July 15, the deputies themselves came to the NABU.
Answering a question from the head of the anti-corruption committee, Anastasiia Radina, Kryvonos explained why there was no internal investigation into Uhlava and the information leak.
According to him, investigating information leakage does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Internal Control Department.
"The Internal Control Department, having received these materials and realizing the importance of this information, began information and analytical work. Based on the results of which, work was initiated with the head of the SAPO, where we discussed, among other things, the assignment of the investigation to the Internal Control Department, the issue of jurisdiction, the possibility of joint investigative actions with the unit that conducted the investigation in the proceedings (on Holyk/Reznichenko) where the leak occurred," Kryvonos explained to the deputies.
As a result, it was decided that the Internal Control Department would head the investigation, and on 10 May, a corresponding entry was made in the register of pre-trial investigations.
"As for the internal investigation, I can explain why it has not been launched. This is because a pre-trial investigation has been launched. This is because disclosure of the pre-trial investigation is a criminal offense. An internal investigation has much fewer tools to establish the truth, to verify facts and identify those who may be involved. The second point is that, based on the results of an internal investigation, a person is brought to disciplinary responsibility. And the term for bringing a person to responsibility is 1 year from the date of the disciplinary offense," Kryvonos said.
"The last message with the alleged disclosure of pre-trial investigation materials and certain investigative actions is dated April 27, 2023. This is what is recorded in the disclosed phone," the NABU director said.
According to him, Kryvonos received an office memo about the disclosure at the end of the day on April 24. In other words, there was no time for an effective internal investigation. It should be recalled that Uhlava had already avoided disciplinary punishment for the Svynarchuks' case.
"Therefore, we believe that we have much more tools in the pre-trial investigation. And because disclosure of pre-trial investigation information is, in principle, a crime," the NABU director added.
At the same time, he said, the NABU has launched other internal investigations, including one into pressure on whistleblowers.
"As soon as I became aware of the pressure on whistleblowers, an internal investigation was launched based on the person's report. Its term expires in the last decade of July. But we plan to complete it in the coming days," Kryvonos said.
The same internal investigation also examined other facts.
In addition, another investigation was launched at the request of the Anti-Corruption Action Center.
The third official investigation concerns illegal instructions to the detective and other facts that Kryvonos refused to make public. He only clarified that it concerns NABU officials and the events of 2022-23. Here, the results of the investigation are ready and will be sent to the disciplinary commission, which will decide what sanctions to apply.
According to Kryvonos, it will take the disciplinary commission about a month to review the materials and study the situation. This should be a rough guide for deputies and the public.
Another interesting nuance. Last week, Hizo Uhlava wrote a post that he had passed a polygraph, which showed that he was not involved in the leaks.
Instead, Kryvonos said that Uhlava did not take a polygraph at NABU, although he was invited.
So, NABU will give some first conclusions within a month or so.
However, this should not be the main thing. It is to find out to what extent the plague of leaking materials and selling services for opening proceedings has spread in NABU.
The author has heard such accusations against the NABU more than once but without evidence. But with the leaked information, evidence could be heard within the NABU. For example, in the Kolomoiskyi case. As soon as they held a meeting, the next day the former oligarch's lawyers were standing at the detective's door crying that they didn't have the money to pay bail.
The biggest attack of paranoia in the NABU occurred when Kolomoiskyi was detained by the SSU. It also happened right after a meeting where it was decided that the bureau would serve the oligarch with a suspicion after Kryvonos and the head of the SAPO, Oleksandr Klymenko, returned from the United States. That's where they were caught by the news of the SSU serving Kolomoiskyi with a suspicion.
That is why it is worth finding out whether all these leaks had the same source.
They say that certain conclusions were drawn after the searches of Kyryllo Tymoshenko's place.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor.NET
