In Vitalii Shabunin’s opinion, the people behind the pressure against him are the same individuals who initiated the non-appointment of the Director of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES).
ZN.UA investigates.
The team of Vitalii Shabunin, head of the board of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, responded to the searches conducted by investigators from the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) at their leader’s premises. According to the team, taking advantage of the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “is making the first but confident steps toward corrupt authoritarianism,” as stated in a social media post.
They also provided examples of such “steps”: “For example, the draft law by 123 of his ‘servants’ proposing an amnesty for corruption in arms procurement. And although society managed to block that particular bill, Zelenskyy is already preparing a new one—this time under the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Prosecutor General, albeit for a slightly narrower circle of ‘his own,'” the statement says.
The team also mentioned the competition for the position of Director of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES).
“A telling example is the non-appointment of the BES director who won the competition. Zelenskyy’s Cabinet of Ministers openly violated a clear and direct provision of the law. For the ‘servants,’ the word of their tsar is more important than Article 19 of the Constitution, which states that government bodies must act only within the limits and in the manner prescribed by law,” they added.
About the searches
Of course, both the team and Shabunin himself consider the actions of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) unlawful:
“Undoubtedly a smaller step, but still a step toward Zelenskyy’s corrupt authoritarianism, is the criminal proceedings against me and other critics or whistleblowers. To catch. To intimidate. To make an example out of a few and show everyone that if he wants to, he can do whatever he wants with whomever he wants.”
Shabunin described the investigators’ actions as follows:
“A search without a court order at the deployment location of a unit I had joined just a day earlier began at 2:00 p.m. on Friday and ended at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday. In the middle of the search, I was handed a notice of suspicion, under which Zelenskyy’s henchmen in the SBI and the prosecutor’s office propose to imprison me for 5 to 10 years for receiving an official salary of 225,000 UAH over six months (of which 40,000 UAH were mandatory taxes and fees).”
According to him, there were violations during the searches, which were captured on the investigators’ cameras:
“One of the specific objectives of this 15-hour performance was to tamper with my mobile phone. As soon as the SBI investigative team stormed into the room, an SBU officer ran out holding my phone. Two hours into the search, someone outside shouted: ‘Hey, there’s a phone lying under the doorstep!’ And an SBI operative brought the unlocked phone into the room in his hands. This entire spectacle was captured on the investigators’ cameras,” he said.
In his opinion, the story will continue in the media.
“So I’m expecting some fantastic tales from Zelenskyy’s media servants. Procedurally, I have no idea how they plan to legalize such a circus (even in the Pechersk court). A detailed breakdown of the contents of the suspicion and the unlawful actions of Zelenskyy’s henchmen from the SBI and the Prosecutor’s Office can be found at the link…,” he added.
He also expressed respect for the Anti-Corruption Action Center team, who “even managed to organize lawyers for me all the way from Chuhuiv in the middle of the night.”
ZN.UA’s Position
ZN.UA openly expresses its support for the Anti-Corruption Action Center and for Vitalii Shabunin personally, even though our editorial team has not always agreed with his actions in the past.
We are convinced that what is currently happening around the competition for the head of the Bureau of Economic Security, and around Shabunin (and these events are unfolding in parallel not by accident), is not about BES and not about Shabunin.
This is about a long-standing, deeply rooted desire of several iterations of a corrupt and unprofessional government to take revenge on those they could not destroy earlier—only because of the presence of active external support.
Both the BES story and the unprecedented situation with searches conducted against Vitalii Shabunin without a court order cannot be dismissed as mere “overreach by executors.”
