Ukraine’s ousted cyber chief posts bail in corruption case

Ukraine’s anti-corruption court said on Wednesday that Illia Vitiuk, the former cyber chief of the country’s security service (SBU) posted a bail of more than 9 million hryvnias ($218,000) in a corruption case. 

Vitiuk, who was dismissed last May after an earlier probe into his finances, is accused of illicit enrichment. Under the bail conditions, he must appear when summoned, report any change of residence, avoid contact with certain individuals and surrender his foreign passports to investigators.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) last week formally charged Vitiuk, saying his family bought a Kyiv apartment in December 2023 for about $535,000 but reported it at nearly half the price. Investigators said the funds were transferred by a man accused of embezzling from the state railway and related firms, and alleged there was no evidence that Vitiuk’s wife had provided the legal and consulting services she cited as the source of the money.

In court last week, prosecutors pointed to correspondence between Vitiuk’s wife and a realtor indicating the apartment cost significantly more than the declared amount. They also said documents meant to support her consulting work appeared to have been backdated.

Vitiuk rejected the charges as “arbitrary” during a hearing last Thursday, insisting the indictment contained no evidence that he orchestrated his wife’s alleged sham business and claiming he had no knowledge of the apartment’s purchase price.

The SBU described the case as politically motivated, accusing NABU of retaliation after SBU officers detained several of its employees earlier this summer. It said anti-corruption detectives had failed to produce convincing evidence.

Ukrainian journalists and anti-corruption activists who previously spoke with Recorded Future News cast doubt on the SBU’s defense and called it unfounded.

Vitiuk is not the first Ukrainian cyber official accused of financial abuse. In November, two senior cybersecurity officials were dismissed amid an investigation into suspected embezzlement of state funds. They are accused of involvement in a software procurement scheme in which $1.7 million was allegedly embezzled between 2020 and 2022.