Carthage must be destroyed
I understand that after watching the video of the second phase of Operation Carthage, many of you may have felt a very simple, almost physical urge: to go and wash yourselves clean.
To wash off all the filth you saw. Wash off the cynicism, the cruelty, the sheer casualness with which people can discuss fraud, violence, kidnapping and torture of others. Wash off the realisation that behind all this might be people whose official duty was to protect us from crime.
But I want to tell you one thing: what you saw is just the tip of the iceberg.
We have shown only what we could without compromising the investigation. A significant portion of the material cannot be made public yet. And believe me, the darkest part of this corruption iceberg still remains underwater.
When you work with this type of case, a strange combination of two feelings arises. On the one hand, a near-physical revulsion at how low a person can sink, at how hideous the relationships between criminals and civil servants can be. On the other, a very clear realisation that no one is going to fix this except ourselves. And this second feeling is much stronger than the first.
We are used to talking about corruption as something far outside everyday life. As if it's about executive offices, big money, bribes, kickbacks, bitcoin, offshore accounts and complex financial schemes. About people most Ukrainians have never seen and perhaps never will.
But Operation Carthage reveals a completely different side of corruption.
Corruption is the phone scammers calling you or your grandma to trick your last savings out of you.
Corruption is the drugs that can be bought literally around the corner in a nearby shop.
Corruption is when a person can be kidnapped, beaten and tortured, while the people whose job it was to catch the criminals help them evade accountability.
Corruption is when you can become the victim of a crime and never even know that you are seeking protection from people who themselves may be part of a criminal system.
And now we come to the most important point.
Corruption is not just about money. It's not even just about the abuse of power.
It is about impunity.
Because corruption breeds impunity. Impunity breeds permissiveness. And permissiveness sooner or later turns into violence.
When a criminal knows that protection from a law enforcer can be bought with money, they cease to fear the law. When a law enforcer realises that their authority can be converted into a source of illegal enrichment, they cease to serve the state. And when these two find common ground, something far more dangerous than a routine corruption scheme emerges.
At this point a mafia is born.
Not the romanticised mafia from the movies, with its fictional codes of honour and sharp suits, but a real, grotesque system in which organised crime receives state protection, and corrupt state representatives receive the money and influence of the criminal underworld. A system in which the authority of law enforcement can be used not to combat crime, but to serve it. To persecute business competitors and pressure entrepreneurs, journalists, activists and even fellow law enforcement officers who refuse to play by these rules.
These are the hallmarks of the system that we witnessed in the course of Operation Carthage.
During the second phase of the operation, we served notices of suspicion on the first five members of a new criminal organisation which, the investigation found, involved at least 12 individuals.
We demonstrated how, according to the investigators' version of events, the cover-up system for dozens of scam call centres may have operated. How the criminal circles and law enforcement agencies interacted. How attacks on individuals who dared to oppose this criminal business were discussed.
And this is only part of what we have managed to establish.
Yet I would like us to draw another, much broader conclusion from this story.
Corruption does not exist in isolation from society. It grows right through it.
It neither begins nor ends in the office of a high-ranking official taking a bribe. Its existence requires dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, each performing their small function within a massive criminal mechanism.
Someone sets up a scam call centre. Someone else goes to work there as an operator, scamming strangers out of their money day after day. Someone sells drugs. Someone provides cover. Someone leaks information about upcoming searches. And someone simply convinces themselves that nothing terrible is going on – they're just doing their job.
But they're deceiving themselves.
When you knowingly go to work in a scam call centre, when you assist a criminal business, when you become part of a system built on deceit, violence and corruption, you are not just earning a living. You are helping to destroy the country you live in. And at the same time, you are robbing yourselves of a future.
Because corruption possesses one terrifying trait. It never stops where it has been permitted to sprout. It spreads, taking over new territories, new institutions, new spheres of our lives. Today it gives impunity to phone scammers. Tomorrow it will be drug traffickers. The day after tomorrow, kidnappers and torturers.
Corruption acts like a cancerous tumor. It metastasises into state institutions, destroying them from within and gradually stripping the state of its ability to perform its most vital functions.
At a certain point, the question is no longer how well one state agency or another is performing – the question is whether such a state is capable of existing at all. Because a state where criminals can buy law enforcement officers, and law enforcement officers can sell their authority to criminals, gradually ceases to be a country for its citizens. It no longer guarantees security. It no longer ensures justice. It no longer protects the weak from the strong. The country becomes a territory where rights belong to whoever can pay for them.
And unless this process is stopped, such a state is ultimately doomed. That's why I'm always surprised to hear people claim that now is not the time to fight against corruption. That there are more important tasks when there's a war going on. That the fight against corruption can be postponed until victory, and we should sort out these problems later.
Operation Carthage provides a very simple response to such claims. Right now the fight against corruption is a prerequisite for the survival of this state. Because it is impossible to build a strong state if its institutions are being hollowed out by organised crime. It is impossible to guarantee the safety of citizens if those duty-bound to protect them are working for the criminal underworld. It is impossible to speak of the country's future if we are allowing corruption to destroy that future on a daily basis.
And this disease cannot be defeated through half-measures.
Cancer is not cured with persuasion. You don't ask metastases to stop spreading for a while. You don't postpone treatment until more convenient times. You treat it decisively, systematically and at times painfully, using all available means to save the organism.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau has a very ambitious goal: to root out systemic corruption. To smash the mechanisms that allow criminality to infiltrate state institutions. To strip organised crime of any ability to buy state protection.
Our work is a form of anti-corruption chemotherapy. We must locate and burn out these metastases, even when they have penetrated very deeply, even when the treatment triggers vicious resistance, and even when it seems to some that it would be better to leave it be.
Because the alternative is far more terrifying.
Operation Carthage is ongoing. For us, this is not just the name of an investigation: it is a symbol of the work we must see through to the end.
We cannot afford to grow accustomed to this filth from which it is impossible to wash clean. We cannot accept it as an inevitable part of our lives. We cannot agree that crime and corruption will always be stronger than the state.
Because we are the only ones who can change our country.
Carthage must be destroyed.
CARTHAGO DELENDA EST
Oleksandr Abakumov
Translated by Anatolii Tereshchenkov
Edited by Iryna Moskaliuk