Ukraine conducts widespread searches, arrests of anti-corruption officials
KYIV - 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.
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'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. REUTERS
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'Basically every household here has at least two cars, one everyday car like a BMW or Mercedes-Benz, and the other is more fancy… maybe a sports car,' she said, adding that she is 'not one of them' as she is living under her parents' roof. When asked if she had heard of Low's alleged residence in the compound, she said no. 'All kinds of people live around here, I don't really care who they are as long as my life is not disrupted.' Rumours that Low is living in China have swirled since at least 2019, when a photo purportedly showing him at Shanghai Disneyland on Christmas Eve emerged online. China has consistently denied sheltering him or having knowledge of his location. ST has contacted the Shanghai authorities for comments. Low, who has repeatedly claimed his innocence, has been wanted by multiple jurisdictions, including Malaysia, Singapore and the United States, since 2016 for his alleged role in siphoning an estimated US$4.5 billion (S$5.77 billion) from 1MDB, Malaysia's sovereign fund. Low is accused of pocketing US$1.42 billion from three bond transactions that Goldman Sachs arranged for 1MDB. On July 24, Malaysian Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said that the report about Low's location and the passport he allegedly is using is 'not supported by credible proof'. In response to the report, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a statement warning that passport fraud is a serious offence under Australian law. In 2023, Malaysia's anti-graft regulator told Qatari news network Al Jazeera in a written response that it suspected Low to be hiding in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau. Entrances to Green Hills, a sprawling gated residential enclave with over 400 Tudor-styled bungalows, manicured gardens and tree-lined roads in Shanghai. ST PHOTO: MICHELLE NG The scandal, described by the United States Justice Department as the largest case of kleptocracy it had ever investigated, first came to public attention in 2015 when reports emerged that nearly US$700 million was suspected to have been transferred from 1MDB into then-Prime Minister Najib Razak's personal bank account. US prosecutors claim that more than US$4.5 billion was ultimately embezzled from the fund by high-level officials of the fund and their associates, with the money laundered through a global network of shell companies and bank accounts. The stolen funds were allegedly used to finance Low's extravagant lifestyle spanning jewellery, fine art, luxury real estate, a superyacht, lavish parties and even the production of the Hollywood film The Wolf of Wall Street.
