This week Ukraine witnessed something rare. The Prosecutor General signed a notice of suspicion against the Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), announced it in a video address recorded abroad, and within hours his own Office declared that no one had been notified of any suspicion and that the corresponding entries in the pre-trial investigation register had been annulled. The political dimension of the story has been debated everywhere. We suggest reading it differently: as the most instructive case study in years of one institution of Ukrainian criminal procedure that a business owner, a senior executive or a politician may encounter without any warning at all — the signing and service of a notice of suspicion.
Yuriy Bauman, Managing Partner of Bauman Kondratyuk Attorneys Association, commented on the events for the Ukrainian outlet Livyi Bereh (LB.ua) and on Espreso TV’s programme What Next?; the broadcast remarks were reported separately by ADVOKAT POST. What follows is a professional analysis of the institution itself, and, at the end, the lessons that decision-makers in business and politics should draw from the case. Quotations are translated from the Ukrainian originals.
What a notice of suspicion is in law — and why a signature is not yet a suspicion
In public discourse, “suspicion” is a headline: so-and-so “has been served with a notice of suspicion”. In Ukraine’s Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) it is not a headline but a procedural act with precisely defined grounds, content, signatory and, crucially, a moment from which it takes legal effect.
There are exactly three grounds for notifying a person of suspicion (Article 276 CPC): the person has been apprehended at the scene of a criminal offence or immediately after it; a measure of restraint is being sought against the person; or sufficient evidence has been gathered to suspect the person of committing a criminal offence. The third ground is by far the most common in cases involving business and public figures, and it is the one that gives the prosecution the widest discretion.
Nor is the content of the document left to chance. Article 277 CPC requires that a written notice of suspicion be drawn up by a prosecutor, or by an investigator with the prosecutor’s approval, and that it contain, among other things, the substance of the suspicion, the legal qualification with reference to the relevant article of the Criminal Code, a concise statement of the facts including the time and place of the alleged offence, the suspect’s rights, and the signature of the official who issues the notice.
Then comes the provision that public debate usually skips. The status of suspect arises neither from a signature nor from an announcement. Under Article 42(1) CPC, a suspect is a person who has been notified of suspicion in the manner prescribed by Articles 276–279; a person apprehended on suspicion of committing a criminal offence; or a person in respect of whom a notice has been drawn up but not served because their whereabouts could not be established — provided that steps were taken to serve it in the manner prescribed for the service of notices. In other words, between the signed sheet of paper and the suspect stands a procedural act: service. Without it, the suspicion exists as a document, but not as a legal fact.
Yuriy Bauman put the point to LB.ua in a single sentence: “The Prosecutor General’s signature on a notice of suspicion is not yet a suspicion. A person becomes a suspect from the moment the notice is served on them.”
Who is entitled to sign: the ordinary rule and specially protected categories
For the vast majority of people — company owners, directors, chief financial officers — the ordinary rule applies: the notice of suspicion is drawn up and signed by the investigator with the approval of the prosecutor, or by the prosecutor supervising the investigation. Checking authority here comes down to whether the signatory belongs to the group of investigators or prosecutors assigned to the proceedings and whether the document bears the prosecutor’s approval.
For certain categories of persons the law provides an enhanced safeguard: the decision to notify of suspicion must be taken not by a rank-and-file prosecutor but by an official at the very top (Article 481 CPC). Advocates, members of local councils and mayors are notified by the Prosecutor General, a Deputy Prosecutor General or the head of a regional prosecutor’s office within their remit. Members of Parliament, presidential candidates, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, members of the Accounting Chamber, prosecutors of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the Director and other officers of NABU, Deputy Prosecutors General and the head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention are notified by the Prosecutor General (or the acting Prosecutor General) or by the Deputy Prosecutor General who heads SAPO. Judges, judges of the Constitutional Court and members of the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission of Judges are notified by the Prosecutor General or a Deputy; judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) only by the Prosecutor General (or the acting Prosecutor General). The Prosecutor General himself is notified by a Deputy Prosecutor General.
So in the case that caused this week’s uproar, the Prosecutor General did have the authority to sign a notice of suspicion against the Director of NABU. Parliamentarians with legal backgrounds, practising advocates and Yuriy Bauman himself all confirmed as much: “Kravchenko had the right to sign the notice. Both cover letters to the notices are dated 12 September — the day before he crossed the border at 2:30 a.m. So they were signed on a Saturday, in Ukraine. There is no conflict there.” Separately, he noted an ethical dimension that the Code does not regulate: “A man whose Office is under investigation by NABU uses his final days in post to strike at the head of the body investigating it. But that kind of ethics is not codified in the CPC.”
Service: on the day of issue, in person, by an authorised official
Article 278 CPC rests on a simple rule: a written notice of suspicion is served on the day it is drawn up, by an investigator or a prosecutor, and only where such service is impossible is it delivered in the manner the Code prescribes for the service of notices generally. Post, e-mail, delivery through an adult family member or through the person’s employer (Article 135 CPC, to which Article 111 refers) are therefore not an equivalent alternative but a fallback for cases where personal service cannot be effected. A detained person must be served within 24 hours of apprehension, failing which they must be released immediately. And immediately after notification, the date, time and legal qualification are entered in the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations, known by its Ukrainian acronym ERDR (Article 278(4)).
Back to the case. According to Yuriy Bauman, the notice was not served in person: “The whole country knows where Kryvonos is, so the only lawful way is to serve him personally. Instead, the notice was sent to NABU’s registry office ‘for transmission to S. Yu. Kryvonos’ — in other words, the Director of NABU is being invited to organise the service of a notice of suspicion on himself. As head of the institution he could, of course, mark it ‘for action’, but he is hardly likely to.” Neither “impossibility of service” nor “whereabouts unknown” — the only two legal grounds for replacing personal service with another method — existed on these facts.
What the Supreme Court says: the safeguard lies in the signature, and service can be delegated
The question of who may serve a notice of suspicion on a specially protected person has followed an instructive path in the case law of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. We cite only decisions whose texts we have verified in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions.
In its judgment of 19 February 2019 in case No. 349/1487/14-к, the Criminal Cassation Court considered proceedings against a judge who had been served with a notice of suspicion by an official who was neither the Prosecutor General nor a Deputy Prosecutor General. The court held this to be a material breach of procedural law and dismissed the prosecutor’s cassation appeal: a judge may be notified of suspicion only by the Prosecutor General or a Deputy, and that act cannot be delegated. A corruption prosecution collapsed not because the evidence was weak but because service was defective.
On 11 December 2019, in case No. 536/2475/14-к (proceedings No. 13-34кс19), the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court refined the approach. A written notice of suspicion against a judge, “which entails the approval and subsequent signing of that procedural document, may be effected only by the Prosecutor General or a Deputy Prosecutor General”. But the Prosecutor General or a Deputy may instruct an investigator or another prosecutor to physically hand the document over: the guarantee of judicial independence operates at the stage of decision-making and signature, not at the moment sheets of paper change hands. Tellingly, the legislature soon wrote that logic directly into Article 481(2) CPC: the Prosecutor General, a Deputy or the head of a regional prosecutor’s office may instruct other prosecutors to effect written notification of suspicion in the manner prescribed by Article 278(1) and (2).
That position remains good law and is applied to this day. In its judgment of 7 May 2026 in case No. 344/16572/13-к (proceedings No. 51-3586км25), the Criminal Cassation Court, relying expressly on the Grand Chamber’s conclusion, set aside a ruling of the court of appeal that had acquitted an advocate because the notice had been handed to him by an investigator: since the notice had been drawn up and signed by the prosecutor authorised under Article 481 CPC, its physical delivery by an investigator from the assigned team breached neither the guarantees of the legal profession nor the procedure for notification of suspicion.
It was this line of authority that Yuriy Bauman invoked in his comment to LB.ua: “The Supreme Court explained back in 2019 that a notice of suspicion against a specially protected person may be signed only by the authorised official, while it may be served, on that official’s instruction, by an investigator or a prosecutor from the team. The suspect’s employer is nowhere on that list. There is a signature, but there is no suspect.” The registry office of the very institution headed by the addressee is neither an investigator nor a prosecutor, and no instruction from the Prosecutor General can turn it into a lawful agent of service.
The price of a defective notice: why this matters to business
One might think it makes little difference: signed now, served later. The difference is fundamental, and it cuts both ways.
Until a person has acquired the status of suspect, no measure of restraint can be imposed on them, they cannot be suspended from office, and no indictment can be brought. Nor do the post-notification time limits for the pre-trial investigation begin to run, since the Code counts them from the day of notification (Article 219 CPC). But the reverse is also true: without the status of suspect, a person has no right of access to the case file, no right to challenge the notice before an investigating judge (Article 303(1)(10) CPC allows this once two months have elapsed from notification of suspicion of a crime), and none of the toolkit of defence rights that a notice of suspicion unlocks. A suspicion that has been announced publicly but never served leaves a person in the worst of all positions: the reputational consequences have already arrived, while the procedural rights have not.
For a business owner or a senior executive this translates into very concrete things. Banks, insurers, foreign counterparties, tender committees and compliance departments react to the news, not to the acknowledgment of receipt. Key-person clauses in loan agreements and investment documents, change-of-control provisions and fit-and-proper requirements in regulated industries are triggered by a media report. The first task of the legal team faced with an “announced” suspicion is therefore not to rebut the substance but to establish the procedural fact: does a notice exist at all, who signed it, did that person hold the requisite authority on the date of signature, who served it and by what method, and what was entered in the ERDR and when.
It is equally important to understand what a notice of suspicion does not give and does not take away. A search of company premises, temporary access to documents and the seizure of assets are all possible without any suspect — on the ruling of an investigating judge in proceedings in which no one has yet been notified of suspicion. The absence of a notice against the chief executive therefore does not mean that the company is out of the danger zone, and a dawn-raid protocol should exist regardless of whether anyone in management appears in the register.
The case of the week: chronology and Yuriy Bauman’s position
A brief reconstruction of events from public sources. In early September, NABU and SAPO conducted an operation in the course of which a deputy head of a department of the Office of the Prosecutor General was detained. On Saturday, 12 September, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko signed two notices of suspicion — one against NABU Director Semen Kryvonos and one against an unnamed “confidant of the head of SAPO”. Before dawn he crossed the border, and on the morning of 14 September he announced the notices in a video address. NABU stated the same day that no notice had been served on its Director. The President suspended the Prosecutor General by decree and called on Parliament to dismiss him. On the evening of 14 September the Office of the Prosecutor General issued a statement: in the relevant proceedings no person had been notified of suspicion in the manner prescribed by the CPC, there were no legal grounds for such notification, and the entries in the ERDR had been annulled. On 15 September the Verkhovna Rada dismissed Ruslan Kravchenko by 317 votes.
In his comment to LB.ua on 14 September, Yuriy Bauman separated three questions that public debate kept conflating: the lawfulness of the signature, the existence of service, and the consequences for the successor. Resignation, he said, does not cancel the notice but shifts the decision to whoever comes next: “The suspicion does not disappear; a prosecutor’s dismissal does not annul his procedural decisions. But an unserved notice is a piece of paper waiting to be handed over. It must be served either by the new Prosecutor General (or acting Prosecutor General) or by a prosecutor on his instruction. In other words, Kravchenko has left his successor not a suspicion but a choice: serve it and you have ‘continued the attack’; don’t, and you have ‘covered it up’. That is not a procedural document. It is a suitcase without a handle, signed on the way out.”
Separately, he drew attention to the gap between the public description of the second notice and its actual legal qualification under Article 190 of the Criminal Code (fraud), rather than the provisions on trading in influence or offering an undue advantage: “The qualification does not match the public narrative, and that usually means the narrative was written for the microphone and the qualification for the investigating judge.” The conclusion of his comment deserves to be quoted in full, because it applies well beyond this case:
“By the letter of the law, Kravchenko’s signature is lawful, the service is not, and the consequences lie in the hands of whoever takes the chair on Riznytska Street after 15 September. A criminal case begins not with a video address but with an acknowledgment of receipt. So far, no one has produced one.”
Yuriy Bauman, comment to Livyi Bereh (LB.ua), 14 September 2026 (translated from the Ukrainian)
The statement by the Office of the Prosecutor General added a further dimension, which Yuriy Bauman addressed on Espreso TV (as reported by ADVOKAT POST on 17 September). The former Prosecutor General insists that he signed the notice, entered the information in the ERDR and dispatched the document in the prescribed manner; his Office maintains that no proper notification took place and that the register entries have been annulled. One of those statements is untrue, and which one is a matter not for the media but for an inquiry. “If there was no notice — that is, if it does not correspond to the case file and the case file contains no such notice, as the Office of the Prosecutor General asserts — then the question arises of grounds for disciplinary liability of the former Prosecutor General Kravchenko,” he said. And further: “On closer examination this may turn out to amount to a criminal offence. If a state body says there was no notice of suspicion, while an individual publishes a document and says that it is one, are those not the hallmarks of conduct that may constitute an offence?” An important caveat: he named no specific article of the Criminal Code. This was an assessment of the need for an inquiry, not an assertion that an offence had been committed.
The mechanism for such an inquiry, in his view, is equally clear: the General Inspectorate of the Office of the Prosecutor General should establish who had access to the relevant ERDR data, who entered the information and who subsequently altered it; the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors should deliver its own conclusion; and the basis for the order authorising the foreign business trip should be examined separately. “There has to be an internal review, and it has to be made public. The Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors has to reach its own conclusion,” he stressed.
An unconventional angle: can a signed notice be “cancelled”?
The announcement that the ERDR entries had been “annulled” raises a question to which the Code gives no direct answer. The CPC knows no procedure by which a prosecutor’s successor “cancels” a notice signed by his predecessor. There is amendment of the notice (Article 279), closure of the proceedings (Article 284) and a finding by an investigating judge, on the suspect’s complaint, that the suspicion is unfounded (Article 303(1)(10)). An entry in the ERDR, by contrast, is not a free-standing decision but a derivative record made after notification has taken place (Article 278(4)). If there was no service, there should have been no entry; removing it is not “cancelling the suspicion” but correcting the register. And then the question of who entered a record of a notification that never happened, when and on what basis, ceases to be a question of procedure and becomes a question of the liability of named officials. That is precisely why Yuriy Bauman insists on an audit of ERDR access rather than on public statements.
The second conclusion reaches beyond this case. The Supreme Court’s logic — the safeguard lies in the signature, service is a technical act — protects the prosecution from formalistic objections about who physically handed over the pages. But the same logic means that a signature, however impeccably lawful, produces no legal consequence whatsoever until proper service has occurred, and that a defect in service can destroy even a substantively strong prosecution, as it did in the 2019 case. Procedural formalism cuts both ways, and the defence must be able to wield it as confidently as the prosecution.
What owners, executives and politicians should take from this
If you or a member of your team learn of a “suspicion” from the news, a journalist’s call or a message from a counterparty, the first step is not a statement but the legal fixing of facts. Establish whether a notice exists as a document; who signed it and whether that person falls within the circle authorised for your status; on what day and by what method service was attempted; and whether the ERDR contains a record of notification and under what date. Each of these circumstances is either a potential ground for the defence or, conversely, a signal that the process is already moving and time is working against you.
At the moment of service itself, it is essential not to give any explanation on the merits without defence counsel; to obtain a copy of the document and the written notice of rights; to record who effected service and on whose instruction; and to sign nothing other than the acknowledgment of receipt, if you decide to sign that at all. Refusing to sign does not undo service, but a signature given under stress can become evidence.
At company level, a notice of suspicion against a senior manager is a corporate-governance event, not merely a personal problem: the board or the partners must be informed, key-person clauses in contracts reviewed, communications with the bank and the most important counterparties prepared, directors’ and officers’ insurance cover assessed and, above all, the individual’s defence separated from the defence of the business — they involve different lawyers, different interests and different risks. For public figures there is an additional layer: verifying that the document was signed by the very official designated in Article 481 CPC, and that the official held that authority on that date, is the first thing a competent defence lawyer will do — and, as the Supreme Court’s case law shows, it is sometimes enough on its own.
The position of Bauman Kondratyuk Attorneys Association
We take no view on the political expediency of the decisions taken in this affair and draw no conclusions about the guilt or innocence of anyone involved. Our position concerns process: a notice of suspicion is not an instrument of public communication but a procedural act with a designated signatory, a prescribed method of service and a defined moment at which legal consequences arise. When that procedure is disregarded by officials at the highest level, the price is paid not only by one individual but by trust in the institution itself — and, with it, by every entrepreneur who will next be “served with a suspicion” on the evening news.
Bauman Kondratyuk Attorneys Association defends business owners, senior executives and public figures at every stage of criminal proceedings in Ukraine — from the first signs of law-enforcement interest to cassation before the Supreme Court. We recommend having a plan in place before it is needed. Contact us to discuss your situation in confidence; we advise in English, Ukrainian, Polish and Lithuanian.
Frequently asked questions
From what moment does a person become a suspect in Ukraine?
From the moment a written notice of suspicion is served on them in the prescribed manner, or from the moment of apprehension on suspicion of a criminal offence. The one exception is where the person’s whereabouts cannot be established but steps have been taken to serve the notice in the manner prescribed for the service of notices (Article 42(1) CPC). The mere signing of the document, or a public statement about it, creates no suspect status.
Can a notice of suspicion be sent by post or through an employer?
Only if personal service on the day of issue is impossible (Article 278(1) CPC). In that event the general procedure for the service of notices under Article 135 CPC applies: post, e-mail, delivery to an adult family member or to the administration at the person’s place of work. If the person is available and their whereabouts are known, replacing personal service with a dispatch “for transmission” is a breach of the notification procedure.
Who must sign a notice of suspicion against a company director, and who against an MP or a judge?
For ordinary persons, including business executives, an investigator with the prosecutor’s approval, or the prosecutor (Article 277 CPC). For specially protected persons under Article 481 CPC — advocates, members of Parliament, judges, NABU and SAPO officers, the Prosecutor General — the signatory is the Prosecutor General, a Deputy Prosecutor General or the head of a regional prosecutor’s office, depending on the category. The signed document may be physically served, on instruction, by another prosecutor or an investigator from the team, as the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court held in case No. 536/2475/14-к and as was reaffirmed in 2026.
Can a notice of suspicion be challenged?
Yes, but not immediately. Article 303(1)(10) CPC allows the suspect, their defence counsel or legal representative to challenge the notice before an investigating judge once one month has elapsed from notification of suspicion of a criminal misdemeanour, or two months in the case of a crime, but no later than the closure of the proceedings or the referral of the indictment to court. Until then, defects in the notice are recorded and deployed in hearings on measures of restraint, suspension from office and other applications.
Sources
Comment by Yuriy Bauman for the Ukrainian online outlet Livyi Bereh (LB.ua): Anna Steshenko, “A farewell notice of suspicion for NABU Director Kryvonos: is Kravchenko acting lawfully, and what will the political consequences be” (in Ukrainian), LB.ua, 14 September 2026.
Yuriy Bauman’s remarks on Espreso TV’s programme What Next?, as reported by ADVOKAT POST: “Kravchenko’s actions in the Kryvonos suspicion case must be examined; questions of criminal liability may arise — advocate Bauman” (in Ukrainian), ADVOKAT POST, 17 September 2026.
Court decisions are cited from the texts published in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions of Ukraine. Quotations are the authors’ translations from the Ukrainian originals. This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice on any specific matter. The audio summary on this page is narrated by a synthesised voice and condenses the article; in case of any discrepancy, the written text prevails.