Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday protested the targeting of Vitaliy Shabunin, co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), by Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). Shabunin, “a prominent anti-corruption activist who has played a key role in exposing allegations of government corruption,” recently criticized the Ministry of Defense and the president over weapon procurement and supply.

According to AntAC, Shabunin’s family home and work office were raided by the investigators without a court warrant and before Shabunin or his family could obtain legal representation.

HRW provided details of actions against Shabunin, including a year-long smear campaign that portrayed Shabunin as a draft evader and led to online threats, doxxing, arson of his family home, and explosives planted under the apartment doors of his relatives. He is currently being investigated for evading military service and fraud.

AntAC executive director Daria Kaleniuk identified authorities’ actions against Shabunin as attempts to disrupt the organization’s work. She noted that the Presidential Office dislikes accusations of “corruption allegations and harmful government initiatives.” This week, AntAC confirmed at least 70 searches of National Anti-Corruption Bureau employees without court orders after they served a suspicion notice to ex-Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov a few weeks ago.

HRW concluded by insisting that Ukrainian authorities do not engage in or tolerate “retaliation against civic activists who expose alleged corruption and abuses of power,” threatening with failure of the rule of law. 

In recent years, Ukraine has been a center of a number of corruption scandals, including bribery, embezzlement cases, and illegal acquisition of state-owned land by government officials. The Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption noted that Ukraine has been implementing anti-corruption recommendations in “ongoing efforts to combat corruption among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors.”