Ukraine conducts widespread searches, arrests of anti-corruption officials

By Max Hunder

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian security services arrested officials from the country's main anti-corruption agency on Monday and conducted dozens of searches, in a crackdown that the agency said went too far and had effectively shut down its entire mission.

The SBU security body said it had arrested one official at the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine as a suspected Russian spy and another over suspected business ties to Russia. Other NABU officials had ties to a fugitive Ukrainian politician's banned party, the SBU said.

But NABU, which has embarrassed senior government officials with corruption allegations, said the crackdown went beyond state security issues to cover unrelated allegations such as years-old traffic accidents.

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said the searches showed that the authorities were exerting "massive pressure" on Ukraine's corruption fighters.

NABU said at least 70 searches had been conducted by various Ukrainian law enforcement and security agencies in connection with 15 of its employees, and that these had taken place without the approval of a court.

"In the vast majority of cases, the grounds for these actions are the involvement of individuals in road traffic accidents," the statement said, although it also added that some of the cases were about links to Russia.

Although the risk of Russian infiltration "remained relevant," this could not be a justification to "halt the work of the entire institution", NABU said in a statement.

'PRESSURE'

Anti-corruption campaigners have been alarmed since Vitaliy Shabunin, a top anti-corruption activist, was charged earlier this month with fraud and evading military service.

Shabunin and his allies have cast those charges as politically motivated retribution from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office for exposing corrupt officials. On Monday, Shabunin condemned the searches of NABU personnel.

Zelenskiy's office denies that prosecutions in Ukraine are politically motivated.

The SBU said it had arrested a mole working for Russian intelligence inside NABU, who had passed information to his handler on at least 60 occasions. Separately, it had detained a senior NABU detective on suspicion of acting as an intermediary in his father's sales of industrial hemp to Russia.

A third SBU statement said some senior NABU officials had ties to lawmaker Fedir Khrystenko, believed to have fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion in 2022.

A separate law enforcement body, the State Bureau of Investigations, said it had served suspicion notices to three NABU employees for road accidents that had resulted in injuries. NABU said the road traffic accident cases were between two and four years old.

Transparency International said conducting the searches without court orders "demonstrates the massive nature of the pressure by the SBU and (Prosecutor General's Office) on anti-corruption law enforcement agencies".

It called on Zelenskiy to guarantee the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies.

(Reporting by Max HunderEditing by Peter Graff)