Anti-corruption activists and people's deputies are massively avoiding the topic of the fictitious adoption of a child by the current NABU director Semen Kryvonos. Attempts to conceal the crime jeopardize the reputation of the entire anti-corruption system. This is stated in a journalistic investigation, reports UNN.
It seems strange that anti-corruption officials, who are always the first to make statements about corruption, are now massively avoiding a sensitive topic for them. One wants to believe that such a long silence of anti-corruption activists and deputies regarding their colleague Kryvonos has nothing to do with the desire to conceal a crime. Because if it turns out that it does, we have a big question for the anti-corruption system in Ukraine and the double standards of the activists themselves.
In the story, journalists tried to get comments by phone from well-known activists and people's deputies who declare the fight against corruption as their priority. However, most of them refused, tried to avoid answering, or shifted the focus, the video states.
Anastasia Radina, Head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy, left journalists' request unanswered, suggesting they call her the next day. Any attempts to reach her after that were futile.
Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Radina's first deputy, initially assumed that he was being sent questions about "something unclear," and when he received a photocopy of the court decision regarding Kryvonos, he disappeared, journalists report.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak, First Deputy Head of the VR Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, noted that if the NABU director selection commission had no questions for Kryvonos, then he had none either. And in general, NABU is currently "doing its job perfectly," he said.
Martyna Bohuslavets, Head of the Anti-Corruption Center "Mezha", replied on WhatsApp that she does not tolerate the actions of NABU director Kryvonos, but she also does not believe that this is a reason for his dismissal. Also, in her opinion, the fake adoption does not cast a shadow on NABU at all, the story states.
Journalists reported that Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the CPC, simply hung up when asked about Kryvonos. And her colleague, the organization's lawyer Olena Shcherban, asked to send the question to the messenger and did not access it later, the authors of the story reported.
Artem Sytnyk, former NABU director and ex-deputy head of NAPC, whom journalists also contacted for comment, asked to call him later – for example, in a few days.
Instead of Mykhailo Zhernakov, executive director of the DeJure Foundation, an assistant answered. She asked to forward the question to the foundation's official email.
As previously reported, Semen Kryvonos, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), was found guilty of voter bribery in 2009 but avoided punishment under an amnesty because he had a minor son, Maksym, born in 2008, in his care. The child's mother, Svitlana Khomchenko, whom Kryvonos found through intermediaries, confirmed the information about his fictitious registration of paternity.
Subsequently, Kryvonos misled the court: in his application for the cancellation of fictitious paternity, he stated that he was sure that it was his son. However, Maksym's mother, Svitlana Khomchenko, said that there were no relations between her and Kryvonos.