The State Bureau of Investigation suspects Vitaliy Shabunin of having evaded military service for almost six months with the help of the National Agency of Corruption Prevention. He is also suspected of fraud, because he received a salary as a military serviceman.
The State Bureau of Investigation investigators are also investigating the circumstances of his business trips to two research centers of the Ministry of Defense, as well as the circumstances of the “stealing” of a Nissan Pathfinder (Vitaliy Shabunin received it as humanitarian aid and used it). The details of his case are known from the ruling of the Pechersky Court, in which the State Bureau of Investigation investigators requested searches.
According to the court ruling, on February 25, 2022, Vitaliy Shabunin was appointed as a radio station electrician by order of the commander of the 207th separate battalion of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (in official documents, this battalion is designated as military unit A7376). Six months later, Vitaliy Shabunin “convinced the command” that he should be seconded to the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption. In September, he received a letter of request from the NAPC leadership, and from the battalion commander, the order for his secondment. At the same time, “he was aware that the NAPC was not performing tasks in the defense sector, [...] that there was no need for his secondment to the NAPC, and he also had no intention of performing [any] duties”.
Vitaliy Shabunin was not appointed to a position at the National Agency, was not given a job, and was not assigned a supervisor. Therefore, he did not come to work at the NACP building, but “was engaged in personal affairs”. According to the statute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he was supposed to inform the battalion commander about this — but he did not do so. Instead, he received four more letters from the NAPC and four orders for a business trip from the battalion commander. On February 10, 2023, when the last order expired, he returned to the military unit, “thus terminating his criminal activity — evasion of military service duties”.
While Vitaliy Shabunin was on a business trip to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the military unit paid him UAH 184 thousand in salary. In addition, the military unit paid him a social security contribution of UAH 40 thousand. The total amount (UAH 224 thousand) is described by the State Bureau of Investigation investigators as “material damage” to the military unit where he served. Therefore, Vitaliy Shabunin was reported on suspicion not only of evasion of service, but also of fraud.
As can be seen from the ruling, in the same proceedings, the State Bureau of Investigation is investigating two more episodes. The first is Vitaliy Shabuninʼs business trip to two research centers of the Ministry of Defense. The second is the circumstances of the "kidnapping" of a Nissan Pathfinder (2005 model).
Blogger Volodymyr Boyko, who initiated the case against Vitaliy Shabunin (more on him below), published the act of acceptance and transfer of this car. It is clear from the document that Vitaliy Shabunin received the car free of charge from a charitable foundation in June 2023. Vitaliy Shabunin signed the act as a serviceman of military unit A7376 and indicated that he was accepting it “to perform tasks to strengthen the defense capability of Ukraine”. The resolution states that Shabunin used the car when his military unit performed combat missions in combat areas.
Unfortunately, there are no details of these two episodes of the case in the courtʼs decision.
An important part of the suspicion in the case of Vitaliy Shabunin is the role of the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
The SBI investigators substantiate their suspicion, among other things, by the fact that a serviceman can only be seconded to a state body that performs “defense” and “security” tasks. According to the current law, the National Anti-Corruption Commission has no authority over the country’s defense. Therefore, Vitaliy Shabunin should not have been seconded to the National Anti-Corruption Commission in principle, and Vitaliy Shabunin himself knew about it — such is the logic of the SBI investigators.
How did the NAPC justify the need to involve Vitaliy Shabunin? This is known from a letter signed by the NAPC Chairman Oleksandr Novikov in September 2022. Almost a year ago, this letter was published by the Ukrainian News publication.
In the letter, the head of the NAPC writes that his agency has “expanded its areas of activity” and is helping Ukraine fight the enemy. It forms lists of people and companies that need to be subject to international sanctions, and has developed a database that is “used by coordinators of the G7 countries”. In addition, after the start of the great war, the parliament adopted the “Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2021-2025” — and therefore the NAPC was supposed to develop a state program, create an IT tool for its monitoring, etc.
For this purpose, the NAPC requested that Vitaliy Shabunin be seconded — as a person with experience that is “rare in our country”. It is unclear why the NAPC did not appoint him to some position.
Babel sent a question to the head of the NAPC Oleksandr Novikov about what exactly Vitaliy Shabunin was supposed to do at the agency and why he did not receive a position at the NAPC. We will add the answers to the questions to this article when we receive them.
An unusual circumstance of the case against Vitaliy Shabunin is that it was initiated by Volodymyr Boyko.
Volodymyr Boyko is a well-known blogger who has been publishing “leaks” from law enforcement agencies on his Telegram channel “Notes of a Slanderer” for many years. Since the time of President Petro Poroshenko, he has consistently criticized the heads of anti-corruption agencies, prosecutors general, high-ranking judges, and civil activists.
Before the great war, he was a regular guest on the TV channels ZIK, NewsOne, 112, and NASH — channels owned by the “OPZZh” deputies Taras Kozak and Yevheniy Murayev (now under international sanctions). On the eve of the 2019 presidential elections, Babel wrote several times about the "leakings" on Volodymyr Boykoʼs channel, which had no confirmed authenticity, but were objectively harmful to the reputation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau or the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office — and to the international reputation of Ukraine in general.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center has appeared in Volodymyr Boyko’s posts many times. The most telling of these is the post that Boyko published on the eve of the US presidential election, in October 2019. At that time, the MP Andriy Derkach (who later turned out to be an FSB agent) used “leakings” from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine to compromise the new leadership of Ukraine in the eyes of both presidential candidates — Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Volodymyr Boyko retold messages from Andriy Derkach’s last press conference (about NABU interfering in the American elections), and added his own “details” (about the fact that the interference was organized by an FBI representative in Ukraine, who later joined the ACAC’s supervisory board).
With the outbreak of the Great War, Volodymyr Boyko was mobilized and, according to him, served in the 206th separate battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. According to Volodymyr Boyko himself, he started the case against Vitaliy Shabunin when he received an anonymous tip: "An employee of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, unknown to me, anonymously reported that Shabunin V. V. lives in Kyiv, where he is fictitiously serving in the National Anti-Corruption Commission."
Volodymyr Boyko asked lawyer Rostyslav Kravets to represent his interests.
Like Volodymyr Boyko himself, lawyer Rostyslav Kravets has been the subject of media publications for many years. The most famous of them concern the so-called Vovk films.
In November 2023, lawyer Rostyslav Kravets filed a criminal complaint with the State Bureau of Investigation about a criminal offense allegedly committed by Vitaliy Shabunin. Volodymyr Boyko himself filed a separate complaint with the State Bureau of Investigation.
As far as can be understood from his posts and the documents he published, he and lawyer Rostyslav Kravets “forced” the State Bureau of Investigation to open proceedings against Vitaliy Shabunin. The Bureau did not want to do this based on their applications, so they appealed to the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv. Only after the court ruling did the State Bureau enter the information into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations (URPTI).