Security forces’ war in Ukraine: anti-corruption agents interrogated

The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine (GPU) summoned agents of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) for interrogation, says a post in the GPU account on Twitter.

"Agents of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau Ekaterina Sikorskaya and Sergey Titenkov were invited to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office for interrogation. They will be asked a number of questions relating to the recent joint operation of the GPU and the SBU, in which they were involved," said the spokesman for the GPU Andrei Lysenko.

According to him, they will be asked how they became agents without an open competition, as it is required in the legislation on the NABU, and also how they were granted access to state secrets, since documents with a confidential stamp were found in their possession. The GPU will also clarify legality of the NABU operation to provoke a bribe from a representative of the State Migration Service of Ukraine.

All this is a continued conflict between the NABU on the one hand and the GPU together with the SBU on the other. Let us recall, that on November 30 the NABU declared that agents of the National Security Service with the connivance of the Prosecutor General disrupted a special operation of the anti-corruption agency in the State Migration Service (SIC) of Ukraine. As reported in the NABU, "one of the episodes involving the first deputy chairman of the State Migration Service, SBU operatives under the leadership of prosecutors of the GPU illegally detained a detective of the National Bureau, who was working undercover."

According to NABU, the migration service official repeatedly voiced a demand for a "reward" of $30 thousand - first for a positive decision on the issue of granting Ukrainian citizenship to a foreigner, and subsequently- for issuance of a residence permit in the territory of Ukraine.

The NABU expressed the conviction that "a planned sabotage took place" against the employees of the bureau, initiated by the SBU and sanctioned by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine."

In turn, the first deputy chairman of the migration service, Dina Pimakhova (the one who was the suspect), said that she had lodged a statement to the SBU on her own initiative as to the proposal of a bribe. She said that a certain man (agent of the State Security Inspectorate), who named himself a representative of a foreign company, gained her confidence and began suggesting that he would resolve the issue of facilitating the illegal legalization of foreigners. Pimakhova claims she rejected the man’s proposal, but the latter continued to offer her a solution, hinting at a monetary reward. Pimakhova said that after this she wrote an appeal to the SBU.

In this whole story, the SBU-GPU tandem clearly wins, especially given the fact that the Ukrainian Interior Ministry has taken its side. As EADaily reported earlier, Zoryan Shkiryak, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs, stated that anti-corruption bodies should work in accordance with the law. At the same time, he called the methods of NABU "immoral."