The secret police general at the center of a sprawling corruption probe in Ukraine has been released from jail, after posting a $1.4 million bail. Sergey Duka claims that he can prove Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption agency set him up.
Duka was arrested earlier this month under ‘Operation Carthage’, a wide-ranging investigation into the alleged protection of scam-call centers, kidnappers, and drug cartels by Ukrainian police and prosecutors. According to Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Duka used his senior position within the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to shield criminals from prosecution and feed intelligence to organized crime groups, including the ‘Khimprom’ drug cartel.
Duka posted bail on Friday and was greeted by masked SBU agents as he walked out of a detention center in Kiev. Speaking to reporters outside, he said that the SBU helped raise his bail.
“I am very grateful to my colleagues and the Security Service of Ukraine officers for helping me post the unjustified bail that my family and I couldn’t afford,” he said, adding that he “did not commit the crimes with which NABU and SAPO are accusing me.”
NABU and SAPO, the State Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, allege that Duka ran the protection ring along with police officers Vladimir Tsenov and Aleksandr Demianchuk, and criminals Andrey Osipov and Vitaly Ribalko. RT covered the case in depth in our ‘Operation Carthage’ feature earlier this week.
The two police officers allegedly took payments from criminals operating scam-call centers, which often function with the tacit approval of the Ukrainian government. Osipov and Ribalko allegedly served as liaisons between Duka, the police, and the criminal underworld, with Ribalko also accused of kidnap and torture. Duka and Tsenov have both posted bail, and their three accomplices remain behind bars awaiting trial.
Duka maintains that the charges against him were fabricated by NABU and SAPO to thwart an SBU investigation into corruption within the two anti-corruption agencies. “This is revenge by the heads of anti-corruption agencies for the events of last year, namely, the documentation of NABU employees, their corruption crimes, and their leadership,” he told reporters on Friday.
He claimed that NABU agents used a raid on his house to seize documents implicating their superiors in extortion schemes of their own, and that he has evidence to prove this.
The SBU has a contentious relationship with NABU and SAPO. SBU chief Aleksandr Poklad, then serving as the agency’s deputy head, led a crackdown on NABU last July, with his agents searching more than a dozen agency employees over allegations of Russian collaboration. Poklad then attempted to pressure Ukrainian opposition politician Fedor Khristenko into falsely testifying that NABU detectives and senior NABU and SAPO officials were working for Moscow, according to a Ukrainian watchdog group, the Anti-Corruption Action Center.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has made several attempts to curb NABU’s powers, and is seen as an ally of the SBU in the escalating struggle between Ukraine’s secret police and anti-corruption bodies.