(Updated version)
Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko has released a video and the text of a notice of suspicion addressed to National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) Director Semen Kryvonos. The video addresses the alleged falsification of paternity documents to evade punishment, while the text of the suspicion also details an episode concerning a land scheme.
"Episode No. 1. Part One. The court established the fact of a crime in Semen Kryvonos's actions. But no punishment followed: he fictitiously adopted a child and unlawfully obtained grounds for exemption from liability—an amnesty. Subsequently, with this past behind him, he successfully passed a competition involving international experts and headed NABU," Kravchenko commented on the video.
The video itself features an interrogation record of a woman whose child was allegedly adopted by the NABU Director. The woman in the video claims she has no relationship with Kryvonos.
"In June 2009, Holosiyivsky District Court... considered a case charging Kryvonos... with committing an intentional crime against the voting rights of citizens acting by prior conspiracy of a group of persons," the video states.
The video then presents a snippet of an interview with Kryvonos during the competitive selection process for the position of NABU Director. In particular, in the excerpted fragment, Kryvonos explains to a member of the competition committee the circumstances surrounding the closure in 2010 of a case against him concerning the transfer of UAH 15,000 to students for voting for the BYT political party.
In the video, Kryvonos recounts his civic activism as a student and the fabricated accusations: "Law enforcement representatives were basically set on us at the time. They acted very crudely, several students were detained. There were no bribes—that is all nonsense. I had no idea about any search, I was not hiding."
At the same time, according to the report published by Kravchenko, Kryvonos "knowingly misled the members of the competition committee" and developed "a criminal plan, the implementation of which subsequently allowed him to be released from criminal liability."
According to the information in the video, "Semen Kryvonos's criminal plan consisted of creating an artificial ground under which he would obtain the right to fall under an amnesty. One such legislative ground at that time was an individual having a minor child."
The video goes on to state that Kryvonos's accomplice "found him an unmarried woman who had a child, whose father's details in the birth registration book were entered at the mother's direction."
According to the video, the mother of the minor child was misled; she was persuaded to help Kryvonos under the pretext that his employer allegedly needed documents confirming that he had a dependent child.
"As established by the investigation, after legally acquiring paternity over someone else's child, Semen Kryvonos had no intention whatsoever of fulfilling parental duties," the video states.
Subsequently, as claimed in the clip, based on the paternity documents, Kryvonos filed a motion for amnesty, and on June 25, 2009, the court released Kryvonos from criminal liability in connection with the application of the Law "On Amnesty." "In the same way, the case charging Kryvonos with bribing students was closed," the video clip states.
In May 2018, as asserted in the video published by the Prosecutor General, Kryvonos applied to the court with a claim to exclude information listing him as the father, and the court granted the claim.
The clip summarizes that in this manner Kryvonos, with the aim of evading criminal liability for bribing students, "developed and implemented a criminal intent consisting of falsifying the birth certificate and misleading the court."
The video clarifies that under this episode, Kryvonos has been notified of suspicion under Parts 2 and 3 of Article 358 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Later, Kravchenko published a PDF file of the text of the suspicion against Kryvonos on his Telegram channel. In addition to what was stated in the video, the document indicates that in 2014, while serving as the head of the registration service of Obukhiv City-District Department of Justice in Kyiv region, Kryvonos agreed to accept a bribe for the allocation of a plot of land. Thus, according to the text of the document, he is suspected of falsifying official documents to obtain a bribe. However, as the text of the document notes, the crime was not carried out to the end.
Shortly afterward, Kravchenko published another post on his Telegram channel. "Today, NABU and SAPO stated that they 'did not seize any criminal proceedings mentioned in the statements of the Prosecutor General.' This statement is another lie, which is refuted by their own procedural documents," he wrote.
He published a copy of the search protocol from the official offices of the Office of the Prosecutor General. "It records in black and white the seizure of materials from criminal proceedings against NABU and SAPO employees, including covert investigative actions materials," the Prosecutor General explained.
