Anti-corruption activists who always supported NACB demand that it be closed and building sold: "Bureau becomes district department where they chase flies"

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NACB) has turned into an institution whose goal is not to fight corruption, but to boast about indicators and "ticket" those involved in cases. It is easier to close the Anti-Corruption Bureau and sell the building, – wrote anti-corruption activist and journalist of the Nashi Hroshi publication Yurii Nikolov.

"The NACB has become very similar to any law enforcement agency, which aims not to fight corruption, but to boast about indicators that border on "ticketing" the defendants. This is when your case is ruined along the way, or they give you the opportunity to conclude a "sin-pay-and-sin further" agreement. And you keep thanking. Or even worse – the NACB has stupidly forgotten how to work and lost its predatory instinct, becoming a kind of district department where they chase flies and count fines for old women for trading in underground passages," Nikolov wrote.

He noted that this is evidenced, in particular, by the reaction of the head of the NACB to another scandal with a detective who resigned with a conflict and announced the collapse of cases in the Bureau.

"In recent days, the head of the NACB has made several public statements, from which it became clear to me personally that the Bureau is no longer a cake. And my old jokes that it would be easier to close it and sell the building are only part of the joke," Nikolov said.

The activist emphasized that this is about another scandal in the NACB that broke out in January.

"Detective Andrii Denysiuk, who was investigating corruption in the field of drone procurement, decided to resign due to problems with the ability to conduct an investigation. In farewell, he wrote a letter to his former colleagues describing the situation. This letter was published in the media and became the second evidence of problems in the NACB after another detective announced the leak of materials in the summer. As a result of the summer scandal, Gizo Uglava, the first deputy director of the NACB, was removed from his post," he wrote.

Nikolov recalled that the scandal with detective Denysiuk occurred when an international audit was conducting an audit of the work of the director of the Bureau, Semen Kryvonos.

"So it is not surprising that the NACB leadership immediately organized an off-record to convince dozens of journalists that it was Denysiuk himself who was stupid and had not investigated something properly. I was also on that off-record – it was a jackal express against a person who dared to show a huge problem in the Bureau. And the entire NACB leadership took part in it – from the director to the heads of the main departments," the journalist concluded.

Earlier, political expert Oleh Posternak wrote that by leaking secret internal information from the NACB, his former detective Denysiuk exposed a deep crisis that reigns in the Bureau today and calls into question the entire anti-corruption system of the state. "The case with Denysiuk is a case in point of how one person, due to his own unprofessionalism, with a single act exposed all the chaos, disorder and lawlessness in the body that was supposed to become a model of Ukrainian anti-corruption. But it never did," the expert emphasized.

As reported, the State Bureau of Investigation registered criminal proceedings against the NACB Director Semen Kryvonos and his deputy Polina Lysenko for fraud during a competition for managerial positions in one of the Bureau's departments.

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