Instead of Head: NABU Director Kryvonos appoints new first deputy
Kyiv • UNN
NABU Director Semen Kryvonos has appointed Denys Gyulmahomedov as his first deputy, replacing the dismissed Gizo Uglava. Gyulmahomedov has been working at NABU since 2015, and previously headed the department of corruption investigators at Ukrzaliznytsia.
The director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, Semen Kryvonos, has appointed Denys Gyulmahomedov as his first deputy, replacing Gizo Uglava, who was dismissed in a scandal. This was reported by the press service of the bureau, UNN reports.
Details
As noted, Denys Gulmahomedov previously served as Deputy Director for Digital Development and Transformation. He started his work since the NABU was founded in 2015 as a detective. In particular, during his time at the Bureau, he worked as the head of one of the detective departments, whose core area of expertise is investigating corruption crimes in the field of Ukrzaliznytsia JSC. This department has investigated almost all corruption cases at the railroad, as well as a number of high-profile cases, such as Rotterdam+.
Previously, Gizo Uglava held the position of First Deputy Director of the NABU for more than 9 years. He was dismissed from the bureau on September 3, 2024, on the official grounds of violation of the oath of office and rules of ethical behavior. However, Uglava filed a lawsuit in court demanding that the order on his dismissal be recognized as illegal.
It is worth noting that a few months before his dismissal, he managed to make a number of high-profile statementsthat exposed potential problems in the management and investigation processes of anti-corruption detectives.
Uglava accused the NABU leadership, in particular Director Semen Kryvonos, of pressure to force him to resign. He also filed a complaint with the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption against the NABU director and received official whistleblower status.
The then-deputy director of the NABU has repeatedly hinted that decisions in the bureau are made under the influence of external factors, not on the basis of the law. Among the individuals and institutions that he believed exerted this pressure were activists of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC) and the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy, who, as Uhlav noted, had previously worked for the AntAC.
The same opinion is supported by lawyerswho also stated that the real goal of anti-corruption activists has turned from fighting corruption to putting pressure on certain public officials to achieve "external" goals.
In addition, the lawyers' community is sounding the alarm over NABU Director Semen Kryvonos' idea to create his own forensic expertise at the bureau, because "their" experts in the investigation have nothing to do with an independent investigation.
Manipulation of examinations is a common practice for NABU, but it often plays against the detectives themselves. For example, as was the case with the examinations in the cases of Rotterdam+ and former Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan. As lawyer Iryna Odynets stated, NABU lost in court because during the investigation, detectives in these cases "painted" forensic examinations in friendly private offices, and then unsuccessfully tried to confirm their accusations with them. Volodymyr Omelyan himself also noted that detectives engaged "dubious experts" during the investigation of the case against him.
In addition, the NABU tried to leak the expertise in the case against former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solsky, which they themselves had ordered and which was apparently supposed to testify to his innocence.
