The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had a bad enough reputation before it announced an assassination attempt in its upper ranks.
Yet the Jan. 23 statement that former deputy SBU head Dmytro Neskoromny plotted to kill the agency’s internal security chief Andriy Naumov exposed the depth of the agency’s degradation.
Analysts believe that this is a case of officials fighting over corrupt revenues and spheres of influence within the SBU. Some are skeptical that a murder attempt actually took place, seeing the announcement as a big farce.
Either way, the SBU has dodged anti-corruption reforms and is following in the footsteps of its predecessor, the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB). It is impossible to control the integrity and income of the agency’s employees due to its secretive nature.
The agency’s authority to investigate economic crimes gives it many opportunities for corruption and extortion. SBU employees refuse to publish asset declarations, which makes it easy for them to hide illegal income streams from scrutiny.
The only way to change the situation is with a thorough reform of the SBU, according to legal experts and anti-corruption activists. The agency must be stripped of its power to conduct economic investigations.
“(SBU officials) have become part of the system of organized crime,” Olena Shcherban, a legal expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center (ANTAC), told the Kyiv Post. “This is more proof of the need to reform (the SBU).”
The first step in this direction was taken on Jan. 28, when the Rada approved an SBU reform bill in the first reading, and created a new agency that would take over the SBU’s power to investigate economic crimes.
The SBU did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Alleged plot
The SBU on Jan. 27 charged its ex-top official Neskoromny with the attempted murder of Naumov, head of internal security.
The agency alleged that Yury Rasyuk, a consultant at the SBU’s anti-terrorism center, served as intermediary for the plot.
Rasyuk has been arrested, while Neskoromny remains at large. According to a Telegram account that claims to belong to Neskoromny, he has fled to Europe.
The SBU said it detained Rasyuk while he was trying to pay an alleged hitman. According to the investigation, the officer offered $50,000 for the assassination, which involved several organizers.
The security service on Jan. 27 published audio recordings allegedly implicating Rasyuk and Neskoromny in the assassination attempt.
The Telegram account claiming to belong to Neskoromny attributed the case against him to his conflict with current SBU chief Ivan Bakanov. According to the account, Neskoromny is planning to release compromising information about Bakanov.
“When I was fired from the SBU, I was planning to hold a news conference and tell the public about the negative procedures that started at the SBU when Bakanov became its head,” according to a post on the Telegram channel.
Who is Neskoromny?
Neskoromny has a mixed reputation. Some argue he has anti-corruption credentials.
While serving as the deputy chief of the SBU’s anti-corruption unit in 2015, Neskoromny took part in the arrest of two top prosecutors. These so-called “diamond prosecutors” were proteges of Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor general at the time.
Their arrest was seen as a major blow against high-level corruption.
Yet both Neskoromny and anti-corruption unit chief Viktor Trepak were later fired from their jobs. Trepak said this was a backlash from the corrupt establishment.
Neskoromny went on to serve as the first deputy head of the SBU and chief of its anti-corruption unit from November 2019 to March 2020, when he was fired.
Mykhailo Podolyak, who runs communications for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Andriy Yermak, argued that Neskoromny was a protégé of Andriy Bohdan, Zelensky’s former chief of staff.
In September 2019 Neskoromny gave Zelensky recordings implicating Yermak and his brother Denys in alleged corruption, according to sources cited by the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper. Neskoromny was fired not long after that, prompting speculation that his exposure of the Yermaks contributed to his dismissal.
In March 2020, Geo Leros, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, published videos showing the chief of staff’s brother, Denys Yermak, selling state jobs on behalf of his brother.
The Yermak brothers had not denied the videos’ authenticity but Denys Yermak claimed they were taken out of context. Andriy Yermak also dismissed the accusations and lashed out at Leros, promising to sue him.
Meanwhile, Podolyak accused Neskoromny of covering up for corruption.
“Neskoromny’s classic corrupt reputation is well-known but when such a person is under investigation, he turns into a gigantic crusader for the truth and against corruption,” he quipped on Facebook.
The alleged target
Naumov has worked at the SBU since 2019, heading its internal security department, which is supposed to monitor corruption and integrity standards within the service.
Zelensky granted Naumov the rank of brigadier general in October.
According to the chief editor of the Censor.net news outlet, Yuriy Butusov, Naumov is the friend and right hand man of SBU head Bakanov. According to Butusov, Naumov has exceptional influence in the SBU and is involved in covering up corruption schemes.
Naumov previously worked at the Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Agency for the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, where he was investigated for abuse of power.
In October 2019, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative project Schemes published an investigation into Naumov’s assets.
According to the report, Naumov’s mother bought a luxury apartment in Kyiv in 2019, which Naumov currently uses. She paid Hr. 1.2 million despite the apartment’s true market value of Hr 4.5 to Hr 5.5 million. The discrepancy may be a gift that violates anti-corruption law or a tax evasion effort, according to Schemes.
Kostyantyn Uchenyk, who sold her the apartment, has business ties to Valery Khoroshkovsky, the SBU’s chief under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Koroshkovsky returned to Ukraine and met with Zelensky in 2019, according to Schemes.
Seeds of conflict
Some commentators have described one SBU employee killing another as absurd. Others were skeptical about the possibility of a genuine murder attempt, arguing that it could be a fabricated case.
“This looks like a gigantic farce,” Oleksandra Ustinova, a lawmaker from the Voice party, told the Kyiv Post. “When an SBU employee orders the murder of another SBU employee through another SBU employee, and the SBU uncovers it, it looks very strange, to say the least.”
The criminal case looks like an attempt to increase Naumov’s influence and make him look like a victim, according to Ustinova.
“This is an attempt to redistribute corrupt revenues within the agency,” she said.
ANTAC’s Shcherban said that such bitter infighting is a result of the SBU’s power to investigate economic crimes, which creates many opportunities for unjust enrichment. Both Naumov and Neskoromny worked at units dealing with white-collar crime, she said.
Shcherban said that the only way out of this impasse is a thorough reform of the service.
SBU reform
In March 2020 Zelensky submitted an SBU reform bill to the Verkhovna Rada. The first version, which was drafted by Bakanov’s SBU, was heavily lambasted by civil society because it expanded the SBU’s powers instead of limiting them.
The bill has since been improved upon and was approved by the Verkhovna Rada in the first reading on Jan. 28.
The latest version would strip SBU of authority to investigate economic crimes and corruption. It would also eliminate all of the agency’s investigative powers by 2024.
The draft law also seeks to cut the number of SBU employees from the current 27,000 to 25,000 immediately and to 17,000 by 2023.
Bakanov has obstructed SBU reform from the very beginning and the President’s Office has often supported Bakanov’s position, Shcherban said. The President’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
The SBU’s most radical critics have called for its disbandment and replacement with a new Western-style intelligence service.
Shcherban and Oleksandr Lemenov, head of anti-corruption watchdog StateWatch, argued that SBU employees should be vetted similarly to other law enforcement officials and fired if they do not meet integrity and ethics standards.
Russian infiltration?
The corruption-mired SBU has also been accused of failing to fulfill its main function — to fight the Kremlin’s influence.
The SBU has failed to react to the activities of pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, such as Andriy Derkach and Viktor Medvechuk, Shcherban said.
Analysts argue that the level of Russian infiltration at the SBU remains high. Under Yanukovych, Russian influence got so bad that the top leadership of the SBU took orders from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), according to Sergiy Gorbatuk, who investigated the 2013–2014 killings of EuroMaidan Revolution participants.
And yet, Zelensky and Bakanov have given top SBU jobs to Oleksandr Kuksa and Anatoly Kalyuzhnyak — officials who were involved in the crackdown on EuroMaidan protesters.
At the very least, Bakanov should be fired for failing to do his job, Shcherban and Ustinova said.
“Bakanov is currently the main enemy of (SBU) reform,” Shcherban added.
