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

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

Ukraine’s secret police and prosecutors have become private security agencies for scammers and drug cartels
‘Operation Carthage’ is more than just another anti-corruption purge in Ukraine. It’s the story of a criminal empire built by, and relying on, the protection of Vladimir Zelensky’s security services. The Western media won’t touch it. RT will.
Led by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), Operation Carthage is a sprawling investigation into an alleged criminal enterprise involved in drug trafficking, fraudulent call centers, kidnapping, and torture, which operated under the protection of the country’s security and law enforcement agencies – from local police in Kiev to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The investigation is ongoing, but it has so far exposed two overlapping criminal networks.
The first Operation Carthage arrests: The September GangOn 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. 
Ukraine’s scam economy Read more Another wave of arrests followed in November, but first, to understand why multiple networks within the Ukrainian state would want to involve themselves with scam callers, it’s necessary to understand just how important the phone fraud sector is to the Ukrainian economy. 
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 in our ‘State of Corruption’ series. The sector has boomed in wartime Ukraine, with those controlling the scam networks convinci