The Prosecutor General accused the head of NABU of registering paternity over someone elseʼs child in order to avoid punishment

Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko published an investigation in which the NABU head Semen Kryvonos is accused of having illegally registered paternity over someone elseʼs child in order to obtain amnesty in the student bribery case.

According to the investigation, in 2008, Kryvonos, together with an accomplice, organized illegal agitation and bribery of students of the Kyiv National Linguistic University and the Kyiv National Shevchenko University in favor of Yulia Tymoshenkoʼs Bloc.

According to the case materials, they were allocated UAH 90 000 for this. In June 2009, the Holosiivsky District Court of Kyiv considered the charges against Kryvonos under Part 3 of Article 157 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

The Procesutorʼs General Office (PGO) claims that Kryvonos decided to create a formal basis for amnesty. At that time, one of the grounds for its application was the presence of a minor child.

According to the investigation, Kryvonos allegedly had an accomplice who found an unmarried woman with a child. The investigation states that Kryvonos and his accomplice convinced the childʼs mother to file a paternity application with him. She was allegedly told that Kryvonos was working abroad and that the employer needed documents about the child in his care.

After that, Kryvonos was recorded as the childʼs father and a new birth certificate was issued. PGO claims that he did not actually intend to fulfill parental duties.

Kryvonos attached the certificate he received to his petition for amnesty, which he filed with the Holosiivsky District Court. On June 25, 2009, the court acquitted him of criminal liability, and the case of bribing students was closed.

In May 2018, according to the investigation, Kryvonos again appealed to the same court — this time with a lawsuit to exclude information about him as the childʼs father. He attached a DNA examination, which established zero probability of his paternity. In December 2019, the court excluded Kryvonos from the childʼs birth certificate.

For this episode, Kryvonos was charged under Part 2 and Part 3 of Article 358 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — forgery of documents and their use.

During the interview for the position of the NABU director, Kryvonos was also asked about the student bribery case. He denied the information about the bribery and said that in 2007 he was the head of a student organization that opposed the administrationʼs attempts to influence studentsʼ choices.

What preceded

On September 14, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko reported that he had signed a complaint of suspicion against the NABU head Serhiy Kryvonos for forgery of documents. A person close to the SAPO head Oleksandr Klymenko was also charged with influencing judges of HACC, bribery, and facilitating mobilization evasion.

All this happened shortly after NABU and SAPO reported the special operation "Carthage" to "cover up" a network of fraudulent call centers, which was organized by an official of the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office. There, the investigatorsʼ records include "The Boss" — the former head of the State Tax Service. From December 2024 to June 2025, the head of the State Tax Service was Ruslan Kravchenko. Soon after, Kravchenko resigned — the Verkhovna Rada still has to vote on it.

After Kravchenkoʼs appeal, information appeared in the media that he had fled abroad. The Prosecutor General confirmed that he was abroad, but he claims that he had gone on a business trip.

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