Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General (OGP) has denied that a suspicion notice was ever issued against the head of one of the country's anti-corruption bodies, contradicting a claim made hours earlier by suspended Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.
"Within this criminal proceeding, no person, including the head of the anti-corruption body, was notified of a suspicion in the manner prescribed by Ukraine's Criminal Procedure Code. There are no legal grounds for this. The statements about an alleged suspicion were devoid of legal meaning," the OGP said in a statement.
The office said the corresponding entries in the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations had since been cancelled. It did not name anyone involved.
Kravchenko, who was suspended from his post on the same day, said on social media that representatives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) had allegedly tried to get a suspicion notice against NABU director Semen Kryvonos cancelled. He said NABU detective Oleksandr Abakumov had gone to the leadership of the State Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Prosecutor General demanding the suspicion be withdrawn.
"A lawful procedural decision is not cancelled by backroom deals," Kravchenko wrote. He said the suspicion notice had been properly sent, which he said was confirmed by postal receipts, and argued that any attempt to cancel it or remove the record from the register would amount to "political and unlawful interference." He added that political decisions cannot erase evidence and called on Kryvonos to answer questions about his own integrity. Kravchenko did not provide evidence for his claims, and Radio Svoboda said it could not independently verify them.
NABU and SAP deny receiving any notice
Earlier on 14 September, at a briefing, NABU director Semen Kryvonos and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) head Oleksandr Klymenko said they had not received any suspicion notices from Kravchenko. Kryvonos said he had never seen the suspicion and nobody had handed it to him, describing it as a kind of invention, a "telegram suspicion."
Klymenko said he believed the claim was a reaction to an operation known as "Carthage," and said that neither he, his family nor people close to him had received any suspicions.
On the morning of 14 September, Kravchenko had released a video address announcing that he had issued a suspicion notice against Kryvonos. In the same video, he said he had previously been politically restrained from taking that step by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky orders dismissal push after Kravchenko leaves Ukraine
It later emerged that Kravchenko had left Ukraine overnight on 14 September. He said he was on a business trip.
President Zelensky responded in under an hour, saying the prosecutor general had only one path left: dismissal. He asked members of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, to support the dismissal without delay.
The OGP press service told Radio Svoboda on 14 September that Kravchenko had gone on a business trip to France, saying the trip would run for five days from 13 September so he could take part in a hearing of the Parliamentary Network of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). However, PACE spokesperson Natalie Bargellini told Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne the same day that neither Kravchenko nor OGP representatives would take part in the network's meeting on the situation of children in Ukraine, and the published programme for the hearing listed no such participants.
Zelensky formally suspended Kravchenko from his post as prosecutor general under presidential decree No. 905/2026. The decree cites Article 11, part 2 of Ukraine's law on the legal regime of martial law, which gives the president the power to suspend officials whose appointment or dismissal falls within his authority.
NABU and SAP described Kravchenko's suspicion claim as a continuation of a systemic attack on independent anti-corruption bodies.
Resignation and the call centre investigation
Kravchenko had submitted his resignation as prosecutor general on 7 September. Before that, commenting on an anti-corruption investigation into a criminal organisation linked to fraudulent call centres, he said he had no connection to covering up illegal call centre activity, had given no instructions to assist it and had not used his powers as prosecutor general to that end.
Days earlier, the outlet Ukrainska Pravda had reported, citing sources in political circles, that Kravchenko could not be located since NABU and SAP launched their "Carthage" operation. Sources cited by ZN.UA said he was in a private clinic in Kyiv, a claim the OGP denied. Prosecutor's office spokesperson Natalia Bayurko said on 5 September that Kravchenko was at his workplace.
The OGP has said that materials cited in a court ruling contain no direct evidence that Kravchenko gave instructions to assist call centre operations, obstructed their exposure or investigation, received money or improper benefits from the activity, or paid for repairs or alarm installation with criminally obtained funds.
NABU reported on 4 September that it had carried out a special operation exposing a criminal organisation linked to fraudulent call centres, saying it was organised by one of the heads of a structural unit within the Office of the Prosecutor General. The bureau said it had identified five suspected participants.
Investigators say the official set up and led the organisation in mid-2025, and that its members had allegedly built a system of taking regular bribes in exchange for not interfering with the illegal call centre operations. Late on 4 September, the OGP said it would give the investigation its full cooperation.
A court has since ordered two suspects in the "Carthage" case held in custody with the option of bail: Serhiy Kropyva, deputy head of the Office of the Prosecutor General's Department of International Cooperation, and Yelyzaveta Ivakhnenko.
