Ukraine's prosecutor general resigns amid corruption allegations

Ukraine's prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, has left his post after becoming the focus of a corruption investigation. Over the weekend, agents from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) searched his offices, as part of an investigation into a network of illegal call centres operating in the country.

The two agencies announced on Saturday that they had uncovered a money-laundering scheme "led by an official of the prosecutor general's office". According to investigators, the network received payments in exchange for protecting call centres that ran phone scams, and used this mechanism to "launder millions of dollars". Phone scams have risen sharply in both Ukraine and Russia over the more than four years of war between the two countries.

According to NABU, the bribes collected were used to buy property, jewellery and other valuables. The agency released images of a safe full of bundles of dollar bills, and said it had identified five people involved in the scheme, without naming them.

The resignation

On Sunday, Kravchenko had responded to the accusations in a statement on social media, saying he rejected them and calling them "completely unfounded", denying any wrongdoing on his part. Today, however, he announced on Telegram that he had submitted his resignation as prosecutor general. He wrote that he did not want the office to be "used as a tool of political confrontation", adding that his position on the accusations remained unchanged.

Corruption remains a problem Ukraine has struggled to root out, even in the midst of the war with Russia. In recent years, several scandals have also involved people close to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime (GI-TOC), an organisation based in Switzerland, illegal call centres operating in Ukraine employ around 60,000 people.