The current head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Semen Kryvonos, has found himself at the center of a public scandal over testimony concerning his activities in 2008. Serhii Kutsenko, the owner of an advertising agency, spoke about the current official’s involvement in organizing a voter-bribery system, nonpayment to partners, and manipulation of court proceedings. This is reported by "Fakty".
According to the witness, in the spring of 2008 he worked with Kryvonos, who acted as a client on behalf of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT). The task was to recruit up to 8,000 people from leading universities in the capital (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Kyiv National Economic University, National Aviation University, and National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine) to create a campaign network.
The scheme involved three stages of funding:
First tranche (30%): collection of voters’ personal data (full name, telephone number, address).
Second tranche: payment before voting.
Third tranche: financial remuneration for confirmed voting.
Kutsenko said that, fearing wiretapping, coordination meetings were held exclusively in parks near the universities. When it became clear that the campaigning was turning into direct vote-buying, Kutsenko’s agency refused to participate any further.
The witness says that his agency refused to become involved in black vote-buying schemes and left Kryvonos’s operation after the first legal stage. Because of this withdrawal, Semen Kryvonos, who personally handed out money to contractors, underpaid the company by about 6,000 US dollars. According to Kutsenko’s testimony, after the project was shut down, Kryvonos’s team disappeared, leaving about 10 other contractors unpaid as well.
The witness alleged that Kryvonos manipulated the registration of paternity over a child in order to avoid a prison sentence in a criminal case, which he later renounced after a DNA test.
"That is neither humane nor manly. If you declared yourself the father, then keep your word. But as it turned out, you used a small child solely to cover your own backside," Serhii Kutsenko remarked.
The witness expressed surprise at Kryvonos’s appointment to a leadership position at NABU, given his past background. He noted that Kryvonos’s pathologically condescending attitude toward people, failure to fulfill obligations, and readiness to break the law for his own benefit were personally obvious to him as far back as 2008.
For reference The Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv found Semen Kryvonos guilty of committing a crime under Part 3 of Article 157 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (voter bribery). However, in 2009 the official avoided actual punishment by registering paternity and submitting to the court a document confirming that he had a minor child dependent on him. Just eight days later, the court applied an amnesty to Kryvonos. Subsequently, in 2018–2019, the same Holosiivskyi court, following a lawsuit filed by Kryvonos and based on the results of a DNA examination, officially annulled the record of his paternity with respect to that child.