By Dan Peleschuk<\/p>\n
KYIV, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s prosecutor general resigned his post late on Monday after a corruption investigation reached his office, becoming the latest senior official ensnared in an \u200cintensified anti-graft crackdown by Kyiv’s independent watchdogs.<\/p>\n
Ruslan Kravchenko was not charged with a crime or named \u200ca suspect in any investigation. But authorities had accused a subordinate of helping run a fraud ring, prompting the presidential appointee to \u200bquit to avoid “political confrontation”.<\/p>\n
“This is a political decision, and I have made it consciously,” said Kravchenko, 36, in a statement. He denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
The case is the latest in a series of high-profile corruption scandals that have claimed the jobs of senior officials in President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government and forced several wartime shake-ups.<\/p>\n
Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he \u200cwould submit Kravchenko’s request to parliament, \u2060where lawmakers must approve his resignation.<\/p>\n
STACKS OF CASH<\/p>\n
The investigation by the NABU and SAPO agencies, announced on Saturday, centres on a department manager whom prosecutors say took bribes \u2060for helping to cover up a call centre that defrauded Ukrainians and foreigners.<\/p>\n
They said the official recruited fellow employees and friends to launder nearly $1 million in proceeds through real estate purchases and other assets.<\/p>\n
The agencies published photos of a \u200bsafe \u200bfilled with stacks of cash and detectives confiscating a luxury \u200bSUV.<\/p>\n
Such vivid instances of alleged graft have \u200cfuelled public anger at a time when Ukraine is fighting for survival against Russia.<\/p>\n
Last year, Zelenskiy faced the worst political crisis of the war after his ex-business partner was accused of running a $100 million kickback scheme at the state atomic agency.<\/p>\n
CALLS TO REFORM PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE<\/p>\n
Kravchenko had been criticised by opponents for allegedly participating in an attempt to roll back the powers of NABU and SAPO last year – accusations he has denied.<\/p>\n
In Ukraine, the \u200cprosecutor’s office enjoys considerable powers, ranging from probing corruption to \u200binvestigating war crimes.<\/p>\n
Zelenskiy, who had faced protests last year over \u200bthe proposed restrictions on the anti-corruption agencies, said \u200bon Tuesday that he had met with Kravchenko as well as NABU and SAPO \u200cfollowing the latest investigation.<\/p>\n
Opposition lawmaker Andrii Osadchuk, deputy \u200bchair of parliament’s law-enforcement committee, \u200bsaid the scandal underlines the need to reform the prosecution service and called for key posts to be filled through open competition.<\/p>\n
Fighting corruption is also critical to Kyiv’s bid for membership in \u200bthe European Union.<\/p>\n
“It will be very \u200cdifficult for Ukraine to move forward if we do not change the approach to selecting and \u200bappointing the prosecutor general and prosecutors at lower levels,” Osadchuk said.<\/p>\n
(Additional reporting by Jekater\u012bna Golubkova \u200bin Tokyo; Editing by Stephen Coates and Ros Russell)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dan Peleschuk KYIV, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s prosecutor general resigned his post late on Monday after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13482,13452,12007,9433,7245,13483,4657,2012],"class_list":["post-39069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-dan-peleschuk-kyiv","tag-kravchenko","tag-kyivs","tag-nabu","tag-ruslan-kravchenko","tag-sapo-following","tag-the-european-union","tag-zelenskiy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}