US$330,000 bail posted for senior Ukrainian police official in Carthage case

Bail of UAH 15 million (about US$330,000) has been posted for Volodymyr Tsenov, First Deputy Head of the National Police's Strategic Investigations Department, who is implicated in the Carthage case and was remanded in custody by the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) yesterday.

Source: HACC press service in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda; Ukrainska Pravda sources in law enforcement

Quote from a court press service representative: "Yes, bail has been posted."

Details: Sources told Ukrainska Pravda the UAH 15 million bail was paid by two individuals: Mykola Tsenov and T. Lysakova.

Slidstvo.Info, a Ukrainian investigative journalism outlet, reported that Volodymyr Tsenov's father is Mykola Tsenov, who previously served as first deputy head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's Main Directorate for Combating Organised Crime under Volodymyr Bedrykivskyi. In 2012, when Bedrykivskyi stood for election to the Ukrainian parliament in Ternopil Oblast, Mykola Tsenov was his authorised representative.

Mykola Tsenov also co-founded an NGO, Citizens of Ukraine Against Organised Crime, which ceased operations in 2017.

Previously: On 5 November, the High Anti-Corruption Court remanded Volodymyr Tsenov in custody with the option of bail.

Background:

• On 4 November, it emerged that searches had been conducted at the premises of representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and the police as part of Operation Carthage.
• Detectives from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), under the procedural supervision of prosecutors from the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), served five members of a criminal organisation with notices of suspicion. The organisation had established a system of regularly paying bribes to senior law enforcement officials to ensure that scam call centres and other illegal businesses could operate without interference.
• The pre-trial investigation established that the ringleader of the criminal group, Andrii Osipov, who had multiple previous convictions, had recruited serving senior officials from the SSU, the Prosecutor General's Office and the National Police, as well as figures from the criminal underworld, to participate in the illegal activities.
• This enabled scam call centres targeting people in Ukraine and abroad to operate without interference, alongside drug trafficking, the illegal manufacture of counterfeit cigarettes and the forging of foreign currency, among other activities.
• The investigators also established that members of the criminal organisation had been involved in assaults, abductions and the infliction of bodily harm in the interests of the organisation.
• The suspects include Andrii Osipov (the alleged ringleader), Serhii Duka (first deputy head of a department within the SSU), Volodymyr Tsenov (a senior official in the National Police), Oleksandr Demianchuk (deputy head of a division within the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kyiv Oblast Police) and Vitalii Rybalko (a subordinate of the alleged ringleader).

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon to help us keep reporting!