French law enforcement officers conducted searches at the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine at the request of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI).
Babel was informed about this by the State Bureau of Investigation.
According to Babel, this is Svyatoslav Piskun. SBI did not name the prosecutor, only stating that during the searches, the French side had grounds to detain the former prosecutor general.
The reason for the searches at the bureau is not specified, but ZN.UA, citing sources, wrote that they relate to the case of businessman Ihor Kolomoiskyi, who is suspected of organizing an assassination attempt on lawyer Serhiy Karpenko in 2003. Investigators believe that Piskun received a bribe to close the case, the journalists added.
Piskun was Prosecutor General from 2002 to 2007, and later an MP of the 5th and 6th convocations from the “Party of Regions”. And in 2020, he briefly became an advisor to Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktova.
What is known about the case of the assassination attempt on lawyer Serhiy Karpenko?
The investigation believes that in 2003, businessman Ihor Kolomoiskyi ordered an assassination attempt on Serhiy Karpenko, the director of the Ukrainian-American consulting company “Fargo”.
At the center of this story is the Dniprospetsstal enterprise. Among its owners in 2003 were businessmen Hryhorii Surkis and Kostyantyn Hryhoryshyn. In July 2003, Hryhoryshyn decided to sell 15% of “Dniprospetsstal” to Viktor Pinchuk, a businessman and son-in-law of the then President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. Lawyer Serhiy Karpenko was the guarantor of this deal.
At the same time, Kolomoiskyi, the then owner of the “Privat Group”, was also fighting for the plant. According to Karpenko, the oligarch invited him to his office and demanded to “replay the situation with the shareholders’ meeting at ʼDniprospetsstalʼ”.
Kolomoiskyi wanted the lawyer to help him annul the decision of the general shareholders’ meeting that allowed Pinchuk to buy shares. Karpenko refused. The media wrote that after that, in July 2003, Karpenko turned to law enforcement agencies with a statement about threats from Kolomoiskyi.
A few weeks later, Karpenkoʼs partner was attacked — his skull was fractured. According to the investigation, the killers simply made a mistake. On August 16, 2003, Karpenko himself was attacked in Feodosia. Four unknown men beat him on the head with a metal rod and inflicted numerous stab wounds — damaging his right lung and stomach. His wife prevented the lawyer from being killed — he miraculously survived. A few days later, the perpetrators of the assassination attempt were detained. The court sent them to prison on April 28, 2005.
In May 2025, Kolomoiskyi was charged with contract killing and taken into custody.
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