Journalists have published an anti-rating of high-profile scandals involving NABU representatives, which threaten the Bureau's disbandment. As Ukrainski Novyny writes, the anti-rating includes cases related to possible abuse of office, conflicts of interest, inaccurate declaration, and ties with Russian citizens.
Scandals involving NABU are growing. We have compiled NABU's "f*ck-ups" into one anti-rating. It turned out that if you collect the stories of Semen Kryvonos's "heroes" into one book, you get a Criminal Code. This includes runaway detectives with relatives in the Russian Federation, drug trafficking, cryptocurrency fraud, "schemes" with elite real estate and VIP cars, pressure on the court to cover up bribe-taking relatives, etc.
The top 10 scandals involving NABU representatives, according to journalists' materials, include:
1. Timur Arshavin – a detective with access to state secrets fled to Romania. His wife and her relatives were found to have active Russian citizenship, and Arshavin himself is involved in a story with microloans and dubious income.
2. Mykola Maslyak – an official NABU whistleblower was detained on suspicion of organizing drug trafficking and precursor smuggling. According to journalists, the group in which Maslyak operated earned over UAH 50 million monthly.
3. Oleksandr Rykovtsev, Stanislav Braverman, and 15 other detectives. Inaccurate information about cryptocurrencies was found in the declarations of NABU employees. In particular, Rykovtsev's wife declared bitcoins worth over $1 million, and Braverman declared fake cryptocurrency transactions worth over UAH 1.3 million.
4. Valentyn Shmitko – the head of the unit declared a significant amount of cash – sometimes up to 2/3 of his official annual income. Subsequently, he transferred over UAH 4.3 million abroad. His wife, despite the martial law, vacationed abroad while receiving state aid in Ukraine.
5. Mykhailo Romaniuk – a detective who simultaneously investigated the "Rotterdam+" case and acquired elite real estate, which he registered under his relatives' names. Already owning an estate, a car, and other property, he purchased a 117 m² apartment under the preferential "eOselia" program.
6. Roman Nedov – deputy head of the unit, who bought two apartments, registered them under his mother-in-law's name, and later his wife received them as a gift with a significantly underestimated value. This way, hundreds of thousands of dollars were concealed.
7. Stanislav Braverman – a detective who had sexual relations with a witness in a case involving businessman Borys Kaufman. This led to a conflict of interest and the actual failure of two corruption cases worth billions of hryvnias. Braverman was dismissed after significant media coverage.
8. Oleksandr Dotsenko – a person often appearing as a NABU whistleblower, turned out to be a Russian citizen with a valid passport, as well as a graduate of the "FSB school" – the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation.
9. Oleksandr Skomarov – head of the Second Main Detective Unit. He concealed his father's Russian citizenship and his business in ORDLO. His wife left the country in a car registered to the wife of MP Khrystenko from OPZZh, who lives in Moscow, and the driver was an assistant to Chaba Peiter, who has been wanted by NABU since 2023.
10. Markiyan Slonevskyi – a detective who received regular money transfers from Russian entrepreneur Vladislav Iskenderov — the owner of a company from Belgorod that works on state contracts of the occupying country. He also declared cryptocurrency in fake wallets and was caught with dubious deposit addresses.
As "Ukrainski Novyny" notes, the cases cited are only a small part of the existing violations. Behind every caught NABU official, there are dozens of malicious violators. The article emphasizes the lack of proper reaction from NABU, NACP, and other authorized bodies to these facts.
"The problem of NABU is ripe and overripe. This stream of scandals can only be stopped by one thing: the dissolution of the Bureau and the reform of the anti-corruption bloc in general. After that, the system can be restarted on new principles – for a real fight against corruption, and not for creating 'Potemkin villages' for Europeans," "Ukrainski Novyny" concludes.
Earlier, expert Oleh Posternak, commenting on the results of the international audit of NABU, noted that the Bureau is an institutional error that cannot be corrected by any cosmetic reforms. "The Bureau must be dissolved, not reformed," he emphasized.