Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) has charged five people in a new episode of its Carthage case, the bureau said. Investigators say the group ran or shielded scam call centers, drug sales, and a fake-euro workshop. Judges have ruled on two suspects, while the most senior one, a security service general, still waits.

As Ukraine fights off Russia’s full-scale invasion, Brussels has tied its EU membership talks to reforms that include independent anti-corruption agencies, a condition watchdogs flagged as under strain. Carthage is the bureau’s hunt for officials allegedly paid to let scam call centers rob people in Ukraine and abroad, and it now reaches the police and security service meant to stop them.

The general called Akim

On 4 November, NABU detectives detained Serhii Duka, a major general in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). A source in the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) told BBC News Ukrainian that he was held under Article 208 (detention without a prior court order). Investigators say Duka is Akim from their tapes, who helped the group with problems in the SBU, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the police. When the gang paused its call centers last summer, he allegedly told its leader to change addresses and “go partisan.”

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Detectives found Duka at a cottage in Roslavychi, Kyiv Oblast, owned by the family of business partners of a relative with ties to Russia, investigative outlet Slidstvo.Info reported.

NABU unit head Oleksandr Abakumov described armed men at the windows and Duka with a pistol, who then smashed his phones with a hammer on a balcony and destroyed a hard drive. Fighters from Alfa, the SBU’s special forces, then arrived in vans. Abakumov called it absurd that the unit came to shield the general from detectives.

The same day, SBU head Oleksandr Poklad said he had fired two senior officials involved in the case, without naming them. The Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv watchdog, called Duka a key player in the July 2025 attack on NABU, when the SBU searched its detectives. SAP planned to ask a court on 6 November to keep Duka in custody, BBC News Russian reported.

Where the other four suspects stand

Mezha, an anti-corruption center, matched the tapes’ nicknames to the people NABU and SAP charged. The charge list names Andrii Osipov, a repeat convict known as Kryminal (“Criminal”), as the organizer.

On 5 November, the High Anti-Corruption Court ordered Vitalii Rybalka, called Boxer in NABU’s video, held for 60 days without bail, Radio Svoboda reported. The video mentions people being beaten with a hammer. Rybalka denied any part in that and called the suspicion far-fetched, but admitted he knows Osipov. Osipov, jailed in another case, faces the same court next week.

The same court ordered Volodymyr Tsenov, known as Price, held unless he posts bail of UAH 15 million ($330,000). A senior National Police investigator, he is also suspected of taking a bribe.

The fifth suspect, Oleksandr Demianchuk, called Consultant, is a police detective in Kyiv Oblast. No ruling on him was reported by Friday morning.

Detectives also searched Kyiv Oblast police chief Andrii Rubel but did not charge him, Abakumov told Ukrainska Pravda. Rubel ran the National Police’s strategic investigations department from October 2022 to April 2026. NABU suspects he may have acted so as not to notice the crimes, Abakumov said.

What the gang allegedly planned

The tapes show a plot to attack Denys Bihus, an investigative journalist, over his reporting on U420, a shop chain suspected of selling drugs. Participants also discussed how to stop a man who wanted to tell NABU that evidence against one of its detectives might have been faked.

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The leader of the Russian drug cartel Khimprom, called Mexican, offered $2 million on the recordings to remove Dmytro Torhalo, the National Police’s anti-drug chief, Slidstvo.Info reported. Torhalo confirmed Mexican threatened him.

The cartel leader also discussed bribing then-Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko to keep the cartel’s drugs off the banned list, Abakumov said in the same interview. Middlemen suggested offering people close to the minister a share of the business instead.

Police push back, the Presidential Office responds

Andrii Nebytov, a deputy head of the National Police, wrote that the tapes date from September 2025 to April 2026, when police were already tracking Khimprom with Interpol and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Deal plans existed, he said, but police dismantled U420.

Presidential Office head Kyrylo Budanov said after the searches that the law is the same for everyone.

NABU and SAP launched Carthage in September against an official in the Prosecutor General’s Office suspected of shielding call centers. Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko then resigned and left Ukraine. His office has since fired eight people.

A coalition of Ukrainian civil society organizations coordinated by the Agency for Legislative Initiatives presented its third shadow report on Ukraine’s progress under EU accession Chapters 23 and 24 in October. It rates Ukraine’s anti-corruption progress as “limited” and says attempts to pressure anti-corruption staff have not stopped.

The European Commission presents its yearly assessment of Ukraine’s progress toward membership on 4 November. Kyiv can’t close any negotiating chapter until it meets interim benchmarks in these two and on democratic institutions. The EU has made the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) a condition for membership. Signs of pressure on their investigators can cost Ukraine a better anti-corruption score, European Pravda suggests.

Suspensions, detentions, and suspected bugs

The report covers September 2025 to July 2026. That period began weeks after parliament passed a law curtailing NABU and SAPO’s independence in July 2025. Lawmakers restored most of their guarantees nine days later, following public protests. The first incident the report lists came six weeks later.

In September 2025, a Kyiv court suspended a NABU detective over an allegedly false asset declaration. Ukrainska Pravda identified him as Vitalii Tiebiekin. The court set bail at nearly UAH 3 million (about $73,000), an amount the report says breaches the Criminal Procedure Code.

Five days later, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced a new suspicion against a NABU detective already in custody on suspicion of aiding Russia. Ukrainska Pravda identified him as Ruslan Mahamedrasulov. Investigators from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the State Bureau of Investigation ran that case.

In October, NABU said SBU officers had searched the relatives of another detective.

The pressure continued into 2026:

• February: NABU said that, according to preliminary data, officers of a law enforcement agency had tried to install surveillance equipment in the home of a unit head who is part of the Midas investigation team. SBU officers could have been behind it, SAPO chief Oleksandr Klymenko said at a briefing that day.
• March: SBU officers detained a NABU employee at a checkpoint near Sumy while he was on duty there, NABU said. He was released the next day, according to Suspilne. The SBU said he warranted extra checks because he came from occupied territory, didn’t name his workplace, and had Russian numbers in his phone.
• June: NABU found devices that could have been used for covert surveillance in another unit head’s apartment. Men posing as law enforcement had told the neighbor upstairs that a Russian spy lived below him, and NABU said its detectives identified one of them as a serving SBU officer.

The report says the incidents may indicate indirect political pressure intended to obstruct high-level corruption investigations.

Plea deals drive the court’s growth. Legal fixes stall

At the same time, the report credits the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) with better results. In 2025, it adjudicated 114 cases involving 180 people, up from 88 cases involving 137 people in 2024, and issued 109 verdicts, compared with 77. However, 72 of the 2025 verdicts came through plea agreements, while verdicts after trial slipped from 39 to 37.

Structural limits remain. NABU still relies on the SBU to intercept communications. The authors recommend extending its jurisdiction to all top officials, particularly the head and deputy heads of the President’s Office. SAPO says the legal grounds for its first external audit arose in March 2026, but the rules still set no scope for the audit and no deadline for forming its commission.

Meanwhile, the 2026–2030 Anti-Corruption Strategy remains stalled. The parliamentary anti-corruption committee unanimously recommended adopting it at first reading in July, the report notes.

On 22 October, however, lawmakers dropped it from the agenda again for “lack of votes,” MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak said on his Facebook. Days earlier, Ukraine and the EU had set up a joint task force to accelerate rule-of-law and anti-corruption reforms.