Episode 1. Acknowledging paternity of someone elseʼs child in order to avoid punishment and fall under amnesty
The criminal proceedings in which Ruslan Kravchenko declared suspicion to the head of NABU were registered by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) back in 2014. At that time, it concerned extortion of a bribe, but now in these proceedings there is another episode that happened much earlier and which became publicly known back in March 2026 — Kryvonos admitted paternity of someone elseʼs child.
In March of this year, former MP and blogger Boryslav Bereza recorded an interview with Svitlana Khomchenko — the mother of the child whom Semen Kryvonos "adopted" in 2009.
Ruslan Kravchenko himself recorded his statement about the suspicion of Kryvonos and a "close person" of Klymenko.
Руслан Кравченко / Telegram
According to the suspicion made public by Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, in June 2009, the Holosiivsky District Court was considering a case in which Kryvonos was accused of voter bribery.
The investigation alleged that he (together with others) bribed students in 2008 to vote for BYT in the Kyiv City Council elections. The case materials alleged that the BYT representatives gave Kryvonos and his accomplice UAH 90 000. The case was going to a verdict, so, according to Kravchenko, Kryvonos assumed that he could be sentenced to restriction or imprisonment for a term of 2 to 5 years.
To prevent this, no later than June 17, 2009, as Kravchenko says, Kryvonos decided to fictitiously acknowledge paternity. Under the law in force at the time, a minor child in his care gave Kryvonos a chance to avoid punishment.
To do this, Kryvonos allegedly recruited an accomplice who was supposed to help him find an unmarried woman with a small child. Another requirement was the absence of documents stating that the child’s real father acknowledged paternity.
So the accomplice found Svitlana Khomchenko, and together with Kryvonos they convinced the woman to file a joint application with him, in which Kryvonos was recognized as the child’s father. Kryvonos himself was allegedly told that Kryvonos was working abroad and the employer needed documents stating that he was supporting the child.
On June 17, Kryvonos and Khomchenko received a certificate from the registry office recognizing Khomchenko Maksym Andriyovych, born in 2008, as the son of Kryvonos. The representative of the registry office entered this information into the official document (the Book of Birth Registration Acts for 2008, namely — into the birth record No. 700 dated May 15, 2008).
The childʼs last name was changed to Kryvonos, and the patronymic — to Semenovych. A copy of this certificate was also issued to Kryvonos at his request. The suspicion states that Kryvonos and Khomchenko agreed that Kryvonosʼs "paternity" would last no more than a year, and then Khomchenko was going to exclude him from the birth record, since she planned to continue to use the benefits provided for by law for single mothers.
On June 25, 2009, Kryvonos filed a petition with the Holosiivskyi court requesting amnesty for him, citing the fact that he allegedly had a minor child in his care, and attached a dishonestly obtained birth certificate and a certificate from the Holosiivskyi District State Administration stating that he had not been deprived of parental rights over his recently “adopted” son. On June 25, Kryvonos filed this petition in court. On the same day, the presiding judge Rybak granted the petition.
Kryvonosʼ actions are suspected of using a knowingly forged document.
There is another case in the Unified Register of Court Decisions. In 2018, Kryvonos asked the court to cancel the birth certificate of the child. He cited the conclusion of a DNA examination from June 15-25, 2015, conducted by LLC "Court Independent Expertise of Ukraine".
According to the examination, the probability of Kryvonosʼs paternity was 0.00%. In early 2019, the court granted this request. Khomchenko explained in an interview with Bereza that she decided to do this before the child went to first grade.
According to her, Kryvonos paid for the test. It remains unclear why the DNA examination was done in 2015, and the court made the decision only in 2019, when the child was 11 years old.
Kryvonosʼs lawsuit to annul paternity.
Руслан Кравченко / Telegram
Episode 2. Extortion of a bribe for land registration
This episode deals with the events of 2014, when Semen Kryvonos held the position of head of the registration service of the Obukhiv City District Department of Justice in the Kyiv region. His duties included, among other things, registering ownership of real estate, including land.
This case was first discussed in 2016, when Semen Kryvonos won the competition for the position of director of the Odesa territorial department of NABU. Then Slidstvo.Info did a story about it, and Kryvonos eventually refused the position at NABU.
According to the plot of the case, in March 2014, citizen Ruzmatov V. V. appealed to the head of the Stari Bezradychi village council of the Obukhiv area of the Kyiv region Petro Horbachenko, with a request to allocate him 25 hectares of land for the construction of a residential building free of charge. Horbachenko promised to do this, but demanded a bribe.
On April 24, 2014, Ruzmatov appealed to law enforcement agencies and continued to act under the control of law enforcement officers. At the next meeting in May, Horbachenko reported the amount of the bribe — $72 thousand (that is, almost $3 thousand per hectare of land).
Horbachenko also reported that his trusted person would deal with these issues from now on. So Horbachenko involved Kryvonos and Vitaliy Bulashenko. According to suspicion, they knew that Horbachenko was demanding money from Ruzmatov, and agreed to act together. Kryvonos was supposed to involve a front person — Vitaliy Overchenko, to whom the village council would allocate the plot, and then — to secure a contract of sale of the plot to Ruzmatov.
Bulashenko was supposed to be an intermediary between Ruzmatov on the one hand and Kryvonos and Horbachenko on the other. Bulashenko then met with Ruzmatov several times, and also had several telephone conversations with him, during which he discussed the plot and the amount of the reward.
Petro Horbachenko - the then leader of the Stary Bezradychi - died in a car wreck a few years before the full-scale invasion.
Слідство.Інфо / Скриншот / Youtube
On September 24, 2014, the village council allocated the land at Overchenkoʼs request. After that, a purchase and sale agreement had to be drawn up. In order to reduce the amount of tax that had to be paid under the agreement, the partners decided to fictitiously lower the market value of the plot.
On September 30, 2014, officials of the registration service of the Obukhiv City District Department of Justice of the Kyiv region (headed by Kryvonos) registered Overchenkoʼs ownership of the land plot.
In order to reduce the market value of the land, on October 28, 2014, Kryvonos, "directing the illegal actions of other participants in the crime", gave a verbal instruction over the phone to Dmytro Shnaider to find an appraiser who could lower the market value of the land plot, the suspicion states. Shnaider later called Kryvonos and agreed on the optimal USD-UAH exchange rate for Ruzmatov.
Schneider found appraiser Serhiy Ryabokon, who agreed to value the plot at UAH 149 000, not 345 000, and he issued a corresponding conclusion on October 30.
The accomplices were supposed to sign the contract on October 31. But, as the suspicion states, the participants did not complete the registration procedure because they learned that law enforcement officers were recording their illegal activities.
The video, which Kravchenko released on September 15, 2026, notes that the investigation established that on the day of the planned transfer of funds for the land plot, Semen Kryvonos had a meeting with the deputy prosecutor of the Obukhiv area of the Kyiv region Oleksiy Pavlushko.
“After this meeting, Kryvonos Semen abruptly stopped talking on his mobile phone and began to avoid communicating with his accomplices,” the video says.
Kravchenko suspects Kryvonos of demanding a particularly large bribe as an official, and of organizing the preparation and issuance of a forged certificate with an assessment of the value of the land.
What does Semyon Kryvonos say
He says nothing about suspicion. On September 14, the heads of NABU and SAPO — Semen Kryvonos and Oleksandr Klymenko — held a briefing. However, Kryvonos refused to answer any questions regarding the substance of the suspicion.
His only general remark was: "We will evaluate and build a defense strategy."
After Kravchenkoʼs statements, the head of SAPO Oleksandr Klymenko (left) and the head of NABU Semen Kryvonos (right) gathered journalists for a briefing, but did not say anything about the substance of the suspicions.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
He even refused to say whether he knew about the secret investigative actions (SIAs) that law enforcement officers were conducting against all participants in a possible crime in the bribery case.
By law, if there were such investigative actions, Kryvonos should have been informed about them later. Judging by the suspicion and what is in the video released by the Prosecutor General, there were SIAs regarding Kryvonos, or at least telephone conversations were recorded.
In addition, the Register of Court Decisions contains about a dozen rulings, including one authorizing a search of Kryvonosʼs home. It is unknown whether this search took place.
However, in a comment to Slidstvo.Info in 2016, Kryvonos said that as of that time he had testified as a witness twice.
"Not a single fact in this case has been confirmed at all," Kryvonos said then.
Whatʼs wrong with suspicion
The first episode.
The article that Kryvonos is accused of by Kravchenko is a crime of medium gravity. According to the Criminal Code, the statute of limitations for this type of crime is 5 years, which means that it has already expired, and criminal liability for this episode is impossible, unless it is moral. The fact that Kryvonos refuses to comment on this episode does not speak in his favor.
The second episode.
The investigation has been ongoing since 2014. For two years, investigators have regularly received search warrants in various premises, but so far no one has received any suspicions. The suspicion does not specify what benefit Kryvonos was supposed to receive, and there is also no evidence that he knew about the bribe.
If Kravchenko sent the suspicion to Kryvonos, the other defendants should have received it as well, but there is no information about this.
As a candidate for the head of NABU, Kryvonos passed an integrity check
During the competition to elect the head of NABU in 2023, the commission asked Kryvonos about some of the facts voiced in the suspicion, in particular, about possible bribery of students.
"I was the head of the student movement in 2007. A group of students and I went against the administration of one of the universities because of their attempts to persuade students to vote for the desired candidate. In fact, law enforcement representatives were inciting us at that time. There was no bribery," Semen Kryvonos said in an interview in 2023.
However, he did not want to fight and prove his innocence in court, because the amnesty he took advantage of was not a rehabilitative circumstance, but only an opportunity to avoid punishment.
During the interview, Semen Kryvonos was not asked questions about the grounds for the amnesty and about his "adopted" son, who was no longer there at that time.
The land case, which the media wrote about, was also not mentioned there.
During the competition for the position of the NABU head Semen Kryvonos answered questions about the voter bribery case. There were no questions about other cases during the competition.
During the competition, many activists (including the Anti-Corruption Center) called Kryvonos a protege of the Presidentʼs Office. Andriy Yermakʼs name was often mentioned.
It is unclear why all the facts stated in the suspicion were ignored during the selection process.
So there is a suspicion that it was abolished — legal anarchy
The story of the serving of the suspicion on Semen Kryvonos is complex and confusing. The Prosecutor General signed the suspicion, entered information about its serving in the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations, and then did not serve it personally, but sent it by “Ukrposhta” — a letter with declared value.
This format is usually used to send important contracts, court documents, certificates or other securities. Such letters can be tracked, they are served against the recipientʼs signature. This way of reporting the suspicion does not contradict the law, although suspicions are usually sent by mail in cases where it is not possible to serve the document in person.
Suspicions are often sent by mail by NABU and SAPO. In any case, only a court can resolve controversial issues on this issue.
Judging by the photos of the receipts that Kravchenko published, he sent the suspicion to three addresses: directly to NABU, to the registration address of Semen Kryvonos, and to his actual place of residence.
Kravchenko published on his Telegram channel payments and other information about the letters he sent to three addresses under suspicion of Kryvonos.
Руслан Кравченко / Telegram
As the current Prosecutor General — and as of September 13, when the suspicion was signed and sent by mail, Kravchenko remained in office — he acted in accordance with the law. The practice of the Prosecutor General signing a suspicion but not personally delivering it has been in place for many years.
In addition, Kravchenko entered information about the announcement of suspicion into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations.
According to the law, only a court can cancel suspicion and only if the suspect applies to it with such a request. And for this, Kryvonos will have to admit the fact of receiving suspicion.
The second option is that the suspicion can be lifted by the Prosecutor General himself or the acting Prosecutor General (for example, due to procedural violations). This is not the rule, but the exception. A more legal way is to close the criminal proceedings. However, this has not happened yet.
Late in the evening of September 14, a message appeared on the social networks of the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office stating that since the head of the anti-corruption agency was not served with a report of suspicion in the manner prescribed by the Criminal Procedure Code, "there are no legal grounds for this; the statements about the alleged suspicion were devoid of legal meaning, and therefore the corresponding notes in the ERDR about the report of suspicion were canceled".
The Office of the Prosecutor General clarified to Babel that this decision was made by the prosecutor in the proceedings, who excluded from the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations information about the fact of reporting Kryvonosʼs suspicion.
"The corresponding decision of the procedural prosecutor was approved by the Deputy Prosecutor General in accordance with the established division of responsibilities," PGO noted. Apparently, this refers to the Deputy Prosecutor General and Kravchenkoʼs friend Maksym Krym.
This decision calls into question all other suspicions that prosecutors sent to suspects by mail, and gives grounds to claim that such suspicions are illegal.
The position of “Ukrposhta” also remains unclear, as it made a statement that it would now decide whether to deliver the suspicious letter. The SMM officers clarified that this was a joke, but from the subsequent message it seems that this is the case.
“Ukrposhta” noted that they are checking the circumstances under which these suspicious letters were sent and have requested official clarifications. It is unknown to whom.