Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies have moved against a criminal organisation they say is headed by an official of the Prosecutor General's Office and protects a network of scam call centres.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office announced the operation on September 4, saying the suspects were involved in "providing protection for a network of fraudulent call centres and laundering assets", Meduza reported. Neither agency named the alleged head of the organisation or set out the roles of the officials whose premises were reported searched.

As IntelliNews reported, Ukraine is a hotbed of scam centres that prey equally on Russian and European punters, earning an estimated $1bn a month, according to a recent study. An assassination attempt on a Ukrainian businessman in Monaco in July has been linked to organised crime gangs involved in the scam centre business.

The new investigation in Ukraine is aimed at the top of the prosecution service comes as NABU has already charged another member of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration, Iryna Mudra, the former deputy chief of staff. NABU has also brought corruption charges in May against his then chief of staff Andriy Yermak.

Ukrainska Pravda, citing its sources, reported that NABU had detained Serhii Kropyva, a deputy head of the international legal cooperation department at the Prosecutor General's Office, and that Kropyva previously served as deputy head of the Odesa regional administration under Oleh Kiper, with responsibility for digital development.

The same sources said searches were under way at premises belonging to prosecutor general Ruslan Kravchenko, his deputy Mariia Vdovychenko and Kiper, now head of the Odesa Oblast Military Administration. The Prosecutor General's Office denied that part of it. Spokeswoman Mariana Haiovska told Ukrainska Pravda that investigators had conducted no searches at Kravchenko's home or in his office. No comparable denial was issued about Vdovychenko or Kiper, the Kyiv Post reported.

The office said it would cooperate fully with the anti-corruption authorities and provide them with the information they need, and that the employee whose possible involvement in illegal activity is under investigation would be suspended from his duties for the duration of the pre-trial investigation.

Vdovychenko has been the subject of published allegations before. The Anti-Corruption Action Centre, an independent watchdog, said in a 2025 investigation that a brother of hers works as a military prosecutor in Russia, that her father has a business in Russian-occupied Crimea and that other relatives hold Russian passports, the Kyiv Independent reported.

The Mudra case is linked to last year's investigation into the state nuclear monopoly Energoatom, which the Kyiv Independent describes as the largest corruption investigation of Zelenskiy's tenure. Kropyva has not been publicly charged, and NABU has not said whether he is the official it describes as heading the organisation.