Update: Watchdog raises questions about new chief prosecutor's asset declarations

Editor's note: this story is being updated.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sept. 17 appointed Anton Kovalsky, chief prosecutor of Khmelnytsky Oblast, as acting prosecutor general.

Ukraine's previous prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, was fired by parliament on Sept. 15 amid a major corruption scandal.

Media reports suggest Kovalsky could ultimately be appointed prosecutor general, rather than merely serving in an acting capacity.

The media outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported on Sept. 15 that, according to its sources, Kovalsky was the leading candidate for prosecutor general.

Another candidate for the job is Valeriy Prykhozhanov, chief prosecutor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Kovalsky was born in Vinnytsia in 1984 and has served in the prosecution service since 2011.

Previously he was a deputy chief prosecutor of Vinnytsia Oblast from 2020 to 2021 and the chief prosecutor of Chernivtsi Oblast from 2021 to 2025.

Kovalsky's wife registered as a businesswoman in 2023 and earned Hr 5.2 million ($120,000) during her first year in business selling sports nutrition products, the Anti-Corruption Action Center reported on Sept. 17.

"Given the nature of the business, such a high level of income for his wife at the very start of her business career raises questions," the watchdog said.

Some Ukrainian officials' wives register businesses that serve as a front for their husbands' illicit income.

Kovalsky told the Kyiv Independent that his wife "has been engaged in business activities since March 2023."

"She currently operates two retail outlets in Vinnytsia, offering products from well-known international brands, including BioTechUSA, Progress Nutrition, and Scitec Nutrition," he said. "She also sells products online."

He also said that Hr 5.2 million declared by his wife for 2023 and Hr 3.55 million declared for 2025 represent total business revenue, not net profit.

"I am not involved in running my wife's business," Kovalsky added. "I report information about her income in my annual asset declarations in accordance with the requirements of Ukrainian law."

Since 2018, Kovalsky and his family have used a 79-square-meter apartment in Vinnytsia registered in his mother’s name, the Anti-Corruption Action Center said.

There are questions about where his mother, who worked at a psychiatric hospital, obtained the money to buy the apartment, the watchdog added.

Her pre-tax income amounted to Hr 51,000 in 2019, Hr 72,000 in 2020, and Hr 122,500 in 2021, and she reported no savings, according to the Anti-Corruption Action Center.

Kovalsky told the Kyiv Independent that his mother paid Hr 458,200 for the apartment in the form of contributions to a housing cooperative from 2016 to 2018.

“The funds came from my parents’ joint family savings accumulated over many years, including through the work of both of them abroad,” he said. “My mother resides in the apartment permanently. I had no involvement whatsoever in its purchase. I do not use it as my place of residence and stay there only when I visit my parents.”

One of Kovalsky's deputies at the Khmelnytsky Oblast prosecutor's office, Maksym Kuterha, has a controversial reputation.

He failed to pass vetting and was fired from the prosecution service in 2019, later worked at the Economic Security Bureau and was appointed as a deputy of Kovalsky in 2025.

Kuterha’s father-in-law was charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), fled to Russia, and was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for collaboration, Hromadske reported in January.

In 2024, Kuterha and his wife acquired assets with an estimated market value of about $325,000, according to Hromadske.

Specifically, Kutehra's wife bought a 650-square-meter plot of land in 2024 in a premium gated community in Kyiv Oblast for Hr 240,000, Hromadske reported. A 170-square-meter luxury home was later built on the property, according to the outlet.

"The funds used to purchase the land plot came from (my wife) Anastasiia Kuterha's business income and her own earnings, which were also disclosed in my 2024 asset declaration," Kuterha told the Kyiv Independent. "The subsequent construction was financed with our joint funds, which were likewise reflected in our declarations."

Kovalsky told the Kyiv Independent that then Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko had opened an internal probe into Kuterha's assets in January.

"The investigation found no circumstances indicating that the acquisition of these assets was unjustified or that the sources of the funds used to acquire them were unlawful," he added. "It also found no evidence that Maksym Kuterha had violated the requirements of Ukraine's Law on the Prevention of Corruption."

The personal office of Kravchenko, the previous prosecutor general, was searched by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau in early September as part of a large-scale corruption investigation into an alleged scam call center protection racket run from the Prosecutor General's Office.

Within the investigation, a top prosecutor described as a “confidant” of Kravchenko was charged. Publicly revealed evidence hints at Kravchenko being implicated, and he submitted his resignation on Sept. 7.

In a bizarre twist, Kravchenko left Ukraine early on Sept. 14, under the pretext of an official trip to a conference in Paris. But the organizers told the Kyiv Independent that they had not expected him to attend, strengthening the suspicions that the trip was a fig leaf for fleeing Ukraine to avoid potential charges.

Simultaneously with leaving Ukraine, Kravchenko approved charges against the head of the anti-corruption agency investigating him.

The charges against Semen Kryvonos, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, and an unnamed “close associate” of Oleksandr Klymenko, chief of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), were seen by many as a petty vendetta rather than pursuit of justice.

The charges were canceled by the Prosecutor General's Office late on Sept. 14, and Kravchenko was dismissed by parliament the next day.