‘Carthage must be destroyed’: How Ukrainian cops and criminals worked hand-in-hand

The investigation is ongoing, but it has so far exposed two overlapping criminal networks.

On September 5, NABU announced that it had identified five members of a criminal organization run from Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office. Since 2025, the agency alleged, the organization “systematically received bribes” in exchange for not interfering in the illegal activities of Ukraine’s scam call centers, and laundered this money through various channels.

Sergey Kropiva and Elizaveta Ivakhnenko during their respective bail hearings. © Suspilne Ukraine; Novini.LIVE / Galina Ostapovets More than $500,000 was spent on real estate, valuables, and other assets, while a further $300,000 in assets was concealed by transferring it to third parties. Another $250,000 was allegedly laundered through bank accounts, according to NABU and local media.

The list of suspects was quickly leaked by Ukrainian media:

Sergey Kropiva, aka ‘Chancellor’ – deputy head of a department within the Prosecutor General’s Office; and alleged ringleader of the scheme, in custody

Ivan Timoshenko – former head of the Prosecutor General’s Office IT department, allegedly handled payments from the call centers, in custody

Elizaveta Ivakhnenko, aka ‘Muse’ – close associate of Kropiva, accused of money laundering, in custody

Sergey Kutsi, aka ‘Comrade’ – Kropiva’s driver, accused of money laundering, in custody

Danilo Slipchuck, aka ‘Flash’ – son of a Volyn police chief, accused of helping Kropiva communicate with scam centers and organize money

Aleksandr Didich – lawyer, accused of money laundering

Coming less than two weeks after NABU uncovered a separate illegal property seizure ring within his office, the timing of the announcement was a political disaster for Zelensky. Although he was not directly implicated in the criminal network, Zelensky’s handpicked prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, resigned and fled Ukraine in response.

As the economic reforms promised by Ukraine’s post-Maidan leaders failed to materialize, the black economy flourished, and scam call centers proliferated between 2014 and 2016. According to an April report by the Geneva-based NGO Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), Ukraine’s scam call sector employs 60,000 people – two-thirds of the number employed in the legal banking sector – and generates as much as $1 billion per month.

RT has reported extensively on the Ukrainian scam call industry in our ‘State of Corruption’ series. The sector has boomed in wartime Ukraine, with those controlling the scam networks convincing young recruits that defrauding Russian pensioners is not just a path to personal gain – it is their patriotic duty.

Russians are not the only targets, however. According to the GI-TOC report, as many as 80% of the callers’ victims are now Western. Competition among scam gangs has also spilled violently into Western streets: Vadim Ermolaev, the Ukrainian businessman targeted in a bomb attack in Monaco in June, reportedly controlled 170 scam call centers in Ukraine.

As of 2024, There were around 1,000 scam call centers in Ukraine, making up to 8 million phone calls per day, according to Sberbank deputy board chairman Stanislav Kuznetsov. That number has likely increased, and Ukraine’s Zerkalo Nedeli puts it closer to 2,000. This figure is split into “white” and “black” centers, with the former paying for protection and the latter operating as outlaws. According to Zerkalo Nedeli, around half of Ukraine’s scam call centers are “white” operations, with each center paying up to $20,000 per month in protection fees.

Five suspects arrested during NABU's 'Operation Carthage' investigation in Ukraine The Prosecutor General’s Office did not have a monopoly on the protection racket, and a wave of arrests in early November introduced two new players: the SBU and National Police of Ukraine. Five suspects have been detained and charged for their alleged roles in a bribery scheme, in which senior law enforcement officials took bribes to protect scam callers, drug traffickers, kidnappers, and counterfeiters.

Sergey Duka, aka ‘Akim’ – SBU major general, allegedly protected criminal operations from SBU scrutiny and fed intelligence to criminals, in custody

Aleksandr Demianchuk, aka ‘Consultant’ – Kiev police investigator, allegedly transported counterfeit money and ordered violent attacks on behalf of criminals, in custody

Andrey Osipov, aka ‘Criminal’ – organized crime kingpin who coordinated the scheme, in custody on separate charges since July

Vitaly Ribalko, aka ‘Boxer’ – Ospiov’s alleged enforcer, accused of kidnap and torture, in custody

Another key player in the network is Egor Burkin, aka ‘Mexican’. A wanted criminal in both Russia and Ukraine, Burkin heads the ‘Khimprom’ drug cartel, which was allegedly protected by Duka and his colleagues within the SBU. He is currently at large in Mexico. In total, 12 people have been named as persons of interest in the second round of the Carthage investigation.

Corruption is so pervasive in Ukraine that anti-corruption agencies – in deciding who gets investigated – hold immense political power. NABU and SAPO are not neutral players in Kiev, at least according to their targets.

The allegations of Russian collusion against NABU were widely ridiculed as baseless, but they played a major role in Zelensky’s attempts to curb the agency’s powers last year. Zelensky used the allegations to bring NABU under the authority of the Prosecutor General’s Office, but was forced by mass protests and outcry from his Western sponsors to reverse course.

According to the Kiev Post, several of Zelensky’s closest associates view NABU – which is part-funded by the US – as “acting on Washington’s behalf.”

The power struggle, with NABU and SAPO on one side and Zelensky, the SBU, and Prosecutor General’s Office on the other, has often resembled a literal turf war between rival gangs. When NABU agents arrested Sergey Duka at his residence, the SBU general attempted to summon a commando team and brandished a firearm at the detectives, the agency said.

A member of Kropiva’s ring allegedly collects protection money from a scam call center in a screenshot of a video released by NABU, September 2026 More arrests are certain to follow. “What you have seen is just the tip of the iceberg,” Aleksandr Abakumov, the head of NABU’s detective division, wrote on Facebook on November 9. Abakumov said that “a substantial amount of material” gathered by the agency cannot yet be revealed without compromising the investigation, and that “the darkest part of this corruption iceberg remains underwater.”

When criminals and police “find common ground, something far more dangerous than a typical corruption scheme emerges. A mafia is born,” Abakumov wrote on Facebook. “Operation ‘Carthage’ is ongoing. For us, this is more than just the name of a single investigation – it is a symbol of the work we must see through to the end… Carthage must be destroyed.”