The large-scale NABU-SAPO anti-corruption operation codenamed Carthage has become arguably the most high-profile exposure within Ukraine’s law enforcement system in recent years. This is hardly surprising: it concerns the documented activities of certain officials of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) suspected of providing “cover” to fraudulent call centers and laundering property.

However, behind the media uproar over the tapes and searches lies a far deeper problem: the institutional capacity of Ukraine’s law enforcement and justice system. This case unfolded not merely within the walls of the Prosecutor General’s Office. It struck its head, Ruslan Kravchenko, and quickly escalated into an open inter-agency confrontation, complete with a resignation letter, a nighttime departure abroad, and “mailed” notices of suspicion to the head of an anti-corruption body. The situation has once again confirmed the need to abandon political appointments in favor of transparent competitive selection.

How did the exposed criminal organization operate inside the PGO? Where does the line lie between the legal and political responsibility of the agency’s leadership? Why was this operation the result of the hard-won independence of the NABU and the SAPO, which Kravchenko himself, among others, tried to dismantle a year ago? And why is his latest counterattack a purely political move? We explore all of this in our article. 

Carthage: how the system worked

At the center of the NABU-SAPO investigation is Serhii Kropyva, Deputy Head of the International Cooperation Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, known on the released tapes by the alias “the Chancellor.” According to the investigation, he owed this to the patronage of “the Chief” himself. Before his appointment to the PGO in August 2025, Kropyva held senior positions in the Cyber Police for a long time (in particular, he was First Deputy Head of the Department), and later served as an advisor to the Prosecutor General and as Deputy Head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration for digitalization. 

According to the investigation, while holding a senior position at the PGO, Kropyva effectively took personal control over the management of criminal proceedings against fraudulent call centers (in particular, under Article 255 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, creation of a criminal organization, and Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, legalization (laundering) of criminally obtained property).

The scheme allegedly worked in two directions: 

• “covering” and clearing out the market, where call centers under their control were guaranteed immunity in exchange for bribes, while investigative actions and mass searches were carried out against their competitors to “stir things up”; 
• laundering of over UAH 89.9 million in criminally obtained property through overseeing networks of individual entrepreneurs, purchasing real estate (including in Bukovel), cryptocurrency transactions, acquiring luxury items, and registering assets in the names of front persons and close associates. 

The released materials from covert investigative actions revealed a new trend: the individuals in the case systematically studied the HACC’s case law on civil forfeiture, prepared potential witnesses for questioning at NABU, and used their knowledge of procedural nuances to counteract the anti-corruption agencies. 

It was precisely the positions held by the individuals in the case and their understanding of the process that made this investigation an extremely difficult task for NABU detectives. Pavlo Demchuk, Senior Legal Advisor at TI Ukraine, put it this way: 

“Such complex investigations into senior law enforcement officials only demonstrate that the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office are truly capable and independent. Documenting other law enforcement officers is a task of the highest difficulty, if only because they understand the methods and tools used by other employees of the prosecution service or the NABU. Given that international partners support anti-corruption reforms, such investigations only show that this support makes sense.”

From an “illusion of calm” to a resignation letter: how the SAPO tapes changed the Prosecutor General’s stance

The reaction of PGO head Ruslan Kravchenko to NABU’s first procedural actions was pointedly calm. He assured that his office was open, that the safe in the photo released by NABU did not belong to him, and that rumors of his escape were fabricated.

“I understand that many would like me to go into hiding, end up in the hospital, or something else. I’ll disappoint my fans. Yesterday I was at my workplace, today I’m working as usual and doing a bit of exercise,” Kravchenko insisted.

He made this statement even as the media was reporting that “the Chief” was none other than Kravchenko. Andrii Borovyk, Executive Director of TI Ukraine, pointed out that in such a situation, the head of an agency cannot remain in office as if nothing had happened. 

“It seems that the Prosecutor General could not have been unaware of this. From the standpoint of reputation and what is best for the country, the most logical thing would be for him to resign.”

And on September 6, during the HACC hearing on the preventive measure for Serhii Kropyva, SAPO prosecutor Mykola Karas dispelled any doubts about who was hiding behind the alias. He read out conversations between Kropyva and Kravchenko in which the former calls the latter “chief.”

“Hello. Yeah, Andreevich, yeah, chief. No, everything’s fine. No, nobody’s giving me a hard time. Who’d dare cross me? You’ve got my back, everyone knows it,” the prosecutor quoted Kropyva as saying.

When these materials were heard in court, the situation changed dramatically, and the clouds, as they say, gathered over the Prosecutor General. The very next day, according to sources of Ukrainska Pravda, after a late-night conversation with President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Kravchenko submitted his resignation letter, calling it a “political decision.”

Escalation and counterattack: Kravchenko signs a notice of suspicion for Kryvonos and abruptly leaves the country 

On the morning of September 14, despite his announced resignation, Kravchenko made a loud statement: he said he had signed a notice of suspicion for NABU Director Semion Kryvonos, as well as for a person “close to the head of SAPO” Oleksandr Klymenko. In his video address, he also said that his resignation was not an admission of guilt, the result of any deal, or a refusal to fight for his reputation. 

“Operation Carthage was aimed not only at me. Its real goal was to gain access to the materials of criminal proceedings concerning the heads and employees of the NABU and the SAPO. And after that, to remove the Prosecutor General and stop procedural decisions from being made in these cases,” Kravchenko said.

In the same address, he publicly accused Kryvonos of forging official documents to obtain an unlawful benefit and of a “fictitious adoption of a child” to artificially create grounds for evading liability in court. 

Meanwhile, alongside this media attack, an equally telling storyline was unfolding: immediately after these statements were published, it emerged that Kravchenko had left the country. Ukrainska Pravda was the first to report the details: at 2:30 a.m. on September 14, Kravchenko crossed the border in an official car. The official later stated that he was on a business trip abroad to inform international partners about “the real state of affairs in the system of anti-corruption agencies.”

The reaction of the public, the country’s leadership, and the anti-corruption sector only underscored the nature of this demarche. Volodymyr Zelenskyi publicly called on the Verkhovna Rada to immediately support Kravchenko’s dismissal, and the Presidential Office described his actions as unsanctioned freelancing. 

The NABU stated that no notice of suspicion had been officially served on Kryvonos. At a briefing on the situation, Klymenko said that none of the relatives he knew of had received notices of suspicion either, and that Kravchenko’s actions were a continuation of a systemic attack on the independent anti-corruption agencies, which began in earnest with last year’s attempts to subordinate NABU and SAPO to the Prosecutor General’s Office. Incidentally, the heads of the anti-corruption agencies had repeatedly warned about a planned attack on them, including at their press conferences. 

Transparency International Ukraine is convinced that these notices of suspicion are not the outcome of a lengthy investigation but a purely political and performative move designed for media effect. First, the proceedings concerning Kryvonos were entered into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations back on April 25, 2014, meaning they concern events from 12 years ago that lay dormant and relate to a period long before he became head of NABU. Second, the official proceedings concerning the “person close to Klymenko” relate to fraud and obstruction of the activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, not to “influencing HACC judges,” as Kravchenko publicly claimed. Finally, the very method of “serving” the notices, by sending them by mail to NABU’s address instead of delivering them in person, points to an effort to create public noise rather than achieve a procedural result.

All these actions clearly showed that when the law enforcement system operates on the principle of political appointments, its leaders, at a moment of crisis-level exposure, resort not to legal defense but to unprecedented institutional retaliation.

No integrity filter: how a man barred from the NABU and the SAPO came to head the Prosecutor General’s Office

What makes this story especially telling is not the scandal itself but how Kravchenko, before becoming Prosecutor General, tried to get into the anti-corruption agencies. In 2021, he took part in the competition for SAPO prosecutors, and in 2023, he sought the post of NABU Director. In both cases, Kravchenko was eliminated due to the selection commissions’ doubts about his integrity. 

In other words, a person whose candidacy was twice rejected in independent competitive selections became head of the Prosecutor General’s Office within a few years, without any competitive selection, through a purely political procedure. Almost immediately after his appointment, Kravchenko became one of the chief lobbyists of the law that effectively subordinated to him the very agencies he had once been denied the chance to lead. 

On July 22, 2025, the Verkhovna Rada backed Draft Law No. 12414, which aimed to eliminate the independence of the NABU and the SAPO. Publicly defending these changes, Kravchenko assured: “We will be one family.” Only mass protests and pressure from international partners forced the authorities to reverse these provisions. 

“A year ago, they wanted to effectively subordinate the SAPO and the NABU to Ruslan Kravchenko, the Prosecutor General. He held that post then, and he holds it now. But a year later, the NABU and the SAPO, which he failed to subordinate, came to him,” says Andrii Borovyk. “Formally, they came to his subordinates. But, figuratively speaking, they came to his home, in quotation marks, of course.”

The question that remains open: who should decide who leads the prosecution service?

Kravchenko’s career in itself calls into question Ukraine’s established mechanism for appointing the Prosecutor General, where the decision is effectively made by the President and the Verkhovna Rada merely rubber-stamps it. It was precisely this logic that allowed a person twice screened out by the NABU and SAPO selection commissions to obtain a leadership position in the prosecution system without any competitive integrity filter at all, simply through a political decision.

And under the current government, such appointments have now failed for the third time in a row. Before Kravchenko, the post was held by Andrii Kostin, who was also appointed by the President and eventually resigned following a scandal over fake disability status obtained by regional prosecutors. Before him, the post was held by Iryna Venediktova, remembered for effectively “burying” NABU’s crucial investigation into Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Oleh Tatarov. And, as if by habit, both of Kravchenko’s predecessors, like him, had at one point failed a competitive selection: Kostin for the head of SAPO, and Venediktova in the competition for Supreme Court judges. Likewise, none of these Prosecutors General served the maximum six-year term.

Notably, the idea of replacing this political appointment with a transparent competition is not an abstract theory but an already formulated legislative proposal. Back in June 2026, long before Carthage, Draft Law No. 15343 was registered in the Verkhovna Rada. It proposes introducing an open competition for the post of Prosecutor General through the High Council of Justice with the involvement of international experts, as well as a procedure for a vote of no confidence in the Prosecutor General. The authors of the document directly named the problem that this whole story illustrates: “The Prosecutor General’s Office becomes politically dependent on whoever is in power,” precisely because the Prosecutor General is currently appointed by the President with the consent of the Verkhovna Rada rather than by an independent selection commission. 

It is worth noting that introducing competitions for prosecutors of the PGO and regional prosecutor’s offices is also one of the conditions for Ukraine to receive EUR 550 million from the EU under the Ukraine Facility. And the European Commission reminded of this once again after Kravchenko’s scandalous statements.

In other words, these warnings were voiced long before Kropyva and Kravchenko, and each time they came true in almost the same scenario: a political appointment, then a loss of trust, then a loud scandal and resignation. 

The systemic lesson of Carthage: from reputational fires to institutional change

Reducing the Carthage case to luxury watches, mansions, or the personal greed of individual officials means ignoring its main challenge. The scale of this scheme and the scandal that followed became possible not only because of the particular brazenness of the individuals in the case but also because of the architecture of the prosecution system itself. When appointments to key positions are made behind closed doors rather than through a transparent competition, officials answer not to the law but to their personal “chief.”

The NABU-SAPO operation proved the capacity of the anti-corruption infrastructure, but this victory is fragile. Changing specific names in PGO offices will not stop new “Chancellors” from emerging if the principle by which people get these positions remains unchanged.

The only way out of this cycle is to depoliticize the post of Prosecutor General, close systemic loopholes, and hold accountable those who abuse their position. 

This material is funded by Norway. Its content is the sole responsibility of Transparency International Ukraine and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Norwegian Government.