An internal investigation and disciplinary committee found that he may have pressured the Bureau employee who reported the data leak.
Gzio Uglava
Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau Semen Krivonos fired his first deputy Gizo Uglava due to disciplinary concessions. The corresponding message was published on the NABU website.
Uglava violated the Oath of a civil servant, the rules of moral conduct of civil servants, the Law “On Civil Service” and the Code of Ethics of the NABU employee. According to the Bureau, he “committed a number of actions and statements of a negative nature aimed at the personal and professional discrediting of the bureau employee who filed a memo on possible facts of information leakage.”
“In addition, these actions formed in NABU employees an understanding of the possibility of negative consequences for whistleblowing activities, which is an unacceptable violation of the high standards of ethics and virtue that NABU employees and senior management should be guided by in their work,” the statement added.
Gizo Uglava and the context of the dismissal
In May, Uglava was suspended from his duties in connection with the investigation of a possible leak of information from NABU in the case of “Big Construction” and Yuriy Golik.
Gizo Uglava worked in the Georgian prosecutor's office from 1998 until 2012. In 2015, he acquired Ukrainian citizenship and in the same year became the first deputy director of a new anti-corruption body for Ukraine – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. In April 2022, he began to serve as acting director of NABU, since there was no full-fledged director. Since March 2023, Semyon Krivonos has been the director.
In 2017, the Prosecutor General's Office opened a case against Uglava. They checked whether he had Georgian citizenship at the time of receiving a government position in Ukraine. NABU then called this production a form of pressure on the bureau. The Bureau said that Uglava automatically lost his Georgian citizenship when he received Ukrainian citizenship.
In addition, the GPU investigated non-payment of taxes. The Bureau called this accusation unfounded and said that the prosecutor's office was investigating the episode of non-payment of taxes “in advance”.