The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) refused to provide a full answer to the request of the UNN news agency regarding the progress of the investigation into the possible leakage of official information from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). Detective Valeriy Poliuga and former First Deputy Director of NABU Gizo Uglava are involved in this case.
In response to journalists' request, the SAP referred to the restrictions provided by the current legislation and did not provide any specific information about the current procedural status of the case, the existence of suspicions, its possible transfer to court or closure. Questions about the measures taken to prevent further information leaks also remained unanswered.
In addition, the SAP did not provide any statistical information regarding other cases of leakage of official information in its ranks or in the NABU in the last three years — despite a direct request for this.
Given the high public interest in this case, it still does not receive public coverage for more than a year, despite the declared transparency in the activities of anti-corruption bodies. The lack of meaningful answers from the SAP only reinforces the "mystery" of the internal processes of the anti-corruption bloc.
According to the international audit of NABU, it was the head of SAP who gave the instruction to transfer the investigation regarding Uglava to the internal control department (ICD), which, according to auditors, was a critical and probably deliberate mistake. Auditors emphasize that such cases should have been investigated exclusively by NABU detectives within the framework of criminal proceedings.
The current director of NABU, Semen Kryvonos, also confirmed in a recent interview that the investigation is fruitless - there has been no suspicion in a year. The auditors' report also states that the internal control department does not perform its duties properly and has low efficiency.
It will be recalled that there have been increasing public corruption suspicions surrounding NABU employees recently. In particular, the deputy head of one of the Bureau's departments, Roman Nedov, according to journalists, has acquired several elite real estate properties in Kyiv for his family in recent years. The property was registered in the name of the wife's mother, and later - through donation at a significantly understated value - it became the property of the detective's wife. Thus, an apartment in the Sherwood residential complex was donated for $37,000 at a market value of about $100,000. Another NABU employee, Valentyn Shmitko, who heads the Bureau's unit, has been declaring significant amounts of cash - sometimes up to two-thirds of his annual income - for several years, after which these funds were probably taken abroad.
In April, it became known that almost 20 NABU employees were at the center of a scandal due to false information in their cryptocurrency declarations. According to investigations, fake crypto wallets were found in the documents, which may be a way of hiding significant sums.