Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
is a significant issue that affects society going back to the
dissolution of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, Ukraine faced a series of politicians from different sides of the political spectrum, as well as criminal bosses and oligarchs, who used the corruption of police, political parties, and industry to gain power. Ukraine is still considered one of the more corrupt countries in Europe, but has made steady progress at improvement since 2015.
History
The modern period of Ukrainian corruption can be traced back to the integration of individuals linked to Soviet organised crime into the (Soviet, including the Ukrainian, ruling elite) in the 1980s.
As prime minister, Pavlo Lazarenko is alleged to have embezzled between 114 and 200 million US dollars.
After achieving independence, Ukraine faced a period of rather violent corruption in the 1990s and early 2000s. United States diplomats described Ukraine under PresidentsKuchma (in office from 1994 to 2005) and Yushchenko (in office from 2005 to 2010) as a
kleptocracy
Kleptocracy (from Greek , "thief", or , "I steal", and from , "power, rule"), also referred to as thievocracy, is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land the ...
Donetsk Oblast
Donetsk Oblast, also referred to as Donechchyna (, ), is an Oblasts of Ukraine, oblast in eastern Ukraine. It is Ukraine's most populous province, with around 4.1 million residents. Its capital city, administrative centre is Donetsk, though d ...
. In 2005, mass graves of businesspersons, judges, lawyers, and investigators were discovered in Donetsk. Donetsk's ex-Governor Viktor Yanukovych and his
Party of Regions
A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature ...
were among many accused of having close ties to organised crime. Yanukovych nonetheless was elected
President of Ukraine
The president of Ukraine (, ) is the head of state of Ukraine. The president represents the nation in international relations, administers the foreign political activity of the state, conducts negotiations and concludes international treaties. ...
in the 2010 election. In 2014, however, he was overthrown in the Maidan Uprising, which broke out after he refused to sign a trade deal with the European Union. Many protestors cited corruption as the most significant reason for their discontent. Yanukovych was considered more pro-Russian than his predecessors, leading Ukrainian nationalists to argue that corruption was tied to their country's relationship with
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
. Corruption reforms saw some successes in Ukraine since the Maidan Revolution, with a reduction in waste due to police reform, public procurement and the dissolution of state-owned industries, though critics noted this progress to be limited.
Ukraine has been under increased scrutiny on the issue of corruption amidst unprecedented financial aid provided to the country during the 2022 Russian invasion. In January 2023, several senior officials, including five provincial governors, lost their jobs over a corruption scandal. Deputy Defense Minister Viacheslav Shapovalov, following a major procurement scandal in the ministry, and deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, also resigned. A few days earlier a deputy minister at the Ministry of Infrastructure was sacked after the anti-corruption agency detained him while he was receiving a $400,000 bribe, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Despite improvements,corruption remains an area to address in order to join the European Union.
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
and
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
.People First:The latest in the watch on Ukrainian democracy '' Kyiv Post'' (11 September 2012) In 2015 ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' called Ukraine "the most corrupt nation in Europe". According to a poll conducted by Ernst & Young in 2017, experts considered Ukraine to be the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed.
Transparency International
Transparency International e.V. (TI) is a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, its nonprofit and non-governmental purpose is to take action to combat global corruption with civil s ...
's 2024
Corruption Perceptions Index
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index that scores and ranks countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as assessed by experts and business executives. The CPI generally defines corruption as an "abuse of entr ...
(CPI), which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), gave Ukraine a score of 35. When ranked by score, Ukraine ranked 105th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with regional scores, the highest score among Eastern European and Central Asian countries was 53, the average score was 35 and the lowest score was 17. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), the average score was 43, and the worst score was 8 (ranked 180). Commenting on Ukraine's 2023 CPI score, Transparency International noted that Ukraine's score has been improving steadily for 11 years, rising three points from the 2022 score.
The focus on justice system reforms, including restructuring judicial self-governance bodies and increasing judicial independence, has been key. Efforts to strengthen the capacity and independence of its anti-corruption agency (NABU) and its anti-corruption prosecution body (SAPO) – coupled with a national anti-corruption strategy and its comprehensive implementation programme – have provided a solid foundation for ongoing anti-corruption efforts.
However, Transparency International continued, the worrisome number of high-level corruption cases being detected and prosecuted by these agencies shows that much work remains to be done.
In the 2010s prominent Ukrainian economist performed a comparison of the Ukrainian corruption in a wide global context based on data provided by Transparency International. This research estimated the level of corruption in Ukraine as comparable to countries of
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...
with
Uganda
Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...
as the closest counterpart.
Types of corruption
Corruption in Ukraine followed similar paths as organized crime and political parties in the post-
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
.
Bribery
In the 2000s bribes were given to ensure that public services were delivered either in time or at all. Ukrainians stated they give bribes because they thought it is customary and expected. Some of the biggest bribes involved more than US$1 million. According to a 2008 Management Systems International (MSI) sociological survey, the highest corruption levels were found in vehicle inspection (58%), the police (54%), health care (54%), the courts (49%) and higher education (44%). In 2011, Ukrainian PresidentViktor Yanukovych stated that corruption cost the state budget 2.5 billion in revenues annually and that through corrupt dealings in public procurement 10% to 15% (US$7.4 billion) of the state budget ended up "in the pockets of officials".
According to the
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an agency of the United States government that has been responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance.
Established in 1961 and reorganized in 1998 ...
(USAID) in 2006, the main causes of corruption in Ukraine were a compromised justice system and an over-controlling non-transparent government combined with business-political ties to
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
and a weakened
civil society
Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.CORRUPTION ASSESSMENT: UKRAINE
USAID
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an agency of the United States government that has been responsible for administering civilian United States foreign aid, foreign aid and development assistance.
Established in 19 ...
(February 10, 2006) Corruption is regularly discussed in the Ukrainian media.
In 2016, the IMF mission chief for Ukraine stated that the reduction of corruption was a key test for continued international support. Some Western analysts believed that large foreign loans were not encouraging reform, but enabling the corrupt extraction of funds out of the country. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland urged Ukraine to start prosecuting corrupt officials: "It's time to start locking up people who have ripped off the Ukrainian population for too long and it is time to eradicate the cancer of corruption".
In Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2013, Ukrainians reported that the most common institution to which they had paid bribes during the preceding two years was the
police
The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...
Atlantic Council
The Atlantic Council is an American think tank in the field of international affairs, favoring Atlanticism, founded in 1961. It manages sixteen regional centers and functional programs related to international security and global economic prosp ...
In the years after Ukrainian independence, election fraud was widespread, mainly through the use of " administrative resources". On the other hand, according to Taras Kuzio, election fraud in Ukraine could only reach five percent of the total vote. Following the initial rounds of voting in the 2004 presidential election, the Supreme Court of Ukraine ruled that due to the scale of the electoral fraud, it was impossible to establish the election results and ordered a revote.Supreme Court of Ukraine decision regarding the annulment of November 21 vote Full text in Ukrainian an /ref> Afterwards, outright vote rigging diminished, although politicians still claimed election fraud, and administrative tricks to get more votes for a particular party had not vanished. The Ukrainian electorate remained highly sceptical about the honesty of the election process. Any voter who engages in election fraud faces a maximum sentence of two years in jail, though activists say no one has been punished for voter fraud since Ukrainian independence.
In the 2000s United States diplomats claimed the privatization of several Ukrainian state enterprises was rigged in favor of political friends. On a regional level, corruption was discovered in connection with land allocation.
Around 2010 Ukrainian politicians regularly accused each other of corruption while claiming to fight it themselves. After going undercover in the '' Reforms for the Future''
parliamentary
In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
faction in early 2012, Roman Zabzaliuk claimed this faction "bought" its members for "500,000 (for a 'defection' from other parliamentary groups), and then they pay a monthly salary of $20,000-25,000"; in contrast, according to Reforms for the Future, Zabzalyuk had pretended he was "suffering a very serious disease" and the group had managed to raise some $100,000 for Zabzalyuk to undergo surgery in
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada
The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine () is the presiding officer of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russi ...
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency ...
(June 10, 2011) Since 2010 the Ukrainian press brought up thousands of examples of criminal cases in which state officials, as well as politicians and businessmen linked to the then-ruling
Party of Regions
A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature ...
, were shown leniency unprecedented for the general population of suspects.Minister of Internal AffairsVitaliy Zakharchenko stated in 2012 that since 2010 about 400 politicians had faced criminal charges in connection with corruption; most of them from the
Party of Regions
A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature ...
, followed by Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko and Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc members.
In the early 2010s Ukrainian media, particularly the '' Ukrayinska Pravda'', regularly unveiled millionaire lifestyles of Ukrainian politicians and public servants, utterly at odds with their declared official incomes.
According to historian Andrew Wilson, as of 2016 progress in reducing corruption was poor. A 2015 survey showed that 72% of adults blamed "corruption of power" for the lack of progress in reform.
A 2016 requirement for MPs to declare their wealth led to a declared cumulative wealth of about $460 million for the 413 MPs. Reacting to public criticism, MPs cancelled a salary rise that would have doubled their monthly salary. This measure was part of an Anti-Corruption Package passed into law in 2014, which was a requirement of international financial support for Ukraine and a prerequisite to eligibility for visa-free travel within the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
.
Local politics
In the early 21st century several Ukrainian mayors were suspected of using their posts to serve their own business interests.
In 2013 Serhiy Odarych, former mayor of Cherkasy, was suspected of causing a ₴600,000 loss to the city budget.
Judicial corruption
In the early 2010s Ukrainian politicians and analysts described the system of justice in Ukraine as "rotten to the core" and complained about political pressure put on judges and corruption. Independent lawyers and
human rights
Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...
activists complained that Ukrainian judges regularly came under pressure to hand down a certain verdict. Ukraine's court system was widely regarded as corrupt. A Ukrainian Justice Ministry survey in 2009 revealed that only 10% of respondents trusted the nation's court system. Less than 30% believed that it was still possible to get a fair trial. Although
judicial independence
Judicial independence is the concept that the judiciary should be independent from the other branches of government. That is, courts should not be subject to improper influence from the other branches of government or from private or partisan inte ...
exists in principle, in practice there was little separation of juridical and political powers. Judges were subjected to pressure from political and business interests.
A 2017 Reuters article quoted then-PM Volodymyr Groysman, saying that "the weakest link in our fight against corruption is the Ukrainian court"; giving an example of 30 judges "with annual salaries ranging from US$10,000-13,000" who owned Porsches. As another example, in 2012, Volodymyr Rokytskyi, Deputy Head of Ukraine's Security Service, was photographed in public wearing a 32,000 luxurywristwatch—even though its price amounted to his yearly official income—at a joint Ukrainian-American event dedicated to fighting illegal drugs. In the 2010s Ukrainian judges were arrested while taking bribes.
In the early 2010s critics also complained that officials and their children (the latter known as " mazhory") received favourable sentences compared with common citizens.
'' Kyiv Post'' reported in 2018 that several candidates for a post in the new High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine were themselves suspected/associated with corruption. AutoMaidan, Dejure and the Anti-corruption Action Center criticised the Ethics Council's June 2022 decisions in nominations to and exclusions from the High Council of Justice as including judges tainted in relation to corruption and as unfairly excluding the anti-corruption whistleblower judge Larysa Golnyk.
In May 2023, on the orders of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, the President of the
Supreme Court of Ukraine
The Supreme Court of Ukraine () is the highest judicial body in the system of courts of general jurisdiction in Ukraine.Vsevolod Kniaziev was detained while allegedly receiving a bribe. Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Service (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) reported on their social media accounts about allegations of
corruption
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense that is undertaken by a person or an organization that is entrusted in a position of authority to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's gain. Corruption may involve activities ...
in the country's Supreme Court of Ukraine. Anti Corruption officials said that “NABU and SAP have uncovered massive corruption in the Supreme Court, specifically plans to profit unfairly from the Supreme Court leadership and judges.”
Corruption in the public sector
In 2015 corruption allegations were made against Energoatom, Ukraine's state nuclear power operator. In 2016, Energoatom's assets and bank accounts were frozen by Ukrainian courts over allegedly unpaid debts, which Energoatom appealed.
In 2016, many of Ukraine's major provincial highways were in very poor condition, with an Ukravtodor official stating that 97% of roads needed repair. The road repair budget was set at about ₴20 billion, but corruption caused the budget to be poorly spent.
Corruption in higher education
In the 2000s and 2010s higher education in Ukraine was plagued with bribery. In 2011 33% of all students claimed they had encountered corruption in their school, 29% heard about cases of corruption from other students, while 38% had not encountered corruption. According to Transparency International research done in 2008, 47.3% of university students stated that a bribe had been demanded from them; of those, 29% had paid this bribe freely. Global Corruption Report 2008 '',
Transparency International
Transparency International e.V. (TI) is a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, its nonprofit and non-governmental purpose is to take action to combat global corruption with civil s ...
, Chapter 7.4, p. 280. Students could "buy" a college entry, exam results, marking doctoral and/or master's theses.
Bribes ranged from US$10 to US$50 for an exam pass to several thousand for entry to a university. According to government sources, bribes varied from US$80 to US$21,500. Salaries of teachers and professors were low in Ukraine compared with other professions; this may have tempted them to demand bribes. According to Ararat Osipian entire corruption hierarchies formed in Ukraine's colleges and universities. These hierarchies evolved from the 1990s as the result of uncontrolled and rampant corruption. Ararat claimed in 2010 that corrupt ruling regimes control corrupt universities and force them into compliance, including during the elections. This was aided by universities largely still having Stalinist-type bureaucracies, unable to transform.
Until 2015 university autonomy was nonexistent. In 2015 the
Ukrainian parliament
The Verkhovna Rada ( ; VR), officially the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, is the unicameral parliament of Ukraine. It consists of 450 deputies presided over by a speaker. The Verkhovna Rada meets in the Verkhovna Rada building in Ukraine's capi ...
passed a new law on higher education to give universities more autonomy, including control over their own finances. The aim was to encourage private investment, fundraising and the creation of endowments.
In the 2000s Ukrainian government officials were caught with fake university diplomas.
Corruption in the Social Security System
In 2012 PresidentViktor Yanukovych reported that only about 23 percent of social service funds go to those who actually need them. The Ukrainian media featured many stories revealing that even parliamentarians illegally received social benefits, fraudulently claiming to be war and Chornobyl veterans.
Berghahn Books
Berghahn Books is a New York and Oxford–based publisher of scholarly books and academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, with a special focus on social and cultural anthropology, European history, politics, and film and media ...
(Winter 2008) In 2012 advocacy groups accused Health Ministry officials of embezzling money that should have been used to treat AIDS patients by buying AIDS drugs at hugely inflated prices and then receiving kickbacks.
Corruption and business
In 2011 the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
(7 March 2011)
Research conducted by Ernst & Young in 2011 and 2012 showed that the practice of top managers accepting bribes increased by 9 percent in 2011 and 15 percent in 2012. Another 4 percent were ready to pay bribes in order to hide the details of their financial performance.
In 2016, politician Natalia Korolevska estimated that "Corruption has forced business to go in the shadow where now we have 45% of our economy".
In the early 2010s, the representative of one
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
-based company claimed non-Ukrainian companies often lost contracts if they did not pay bribes or failed to "out-bribe" their competitors. Ukrainians and business representatives claimed that "Business ventures above a certain level require palm-greasing of some functionary at some level".
Costs of corruption
According to Ararat Osipian due to endemic corruption, Ukraine failed to sustain its economic growth trends in the 2000s. The corruption, perceived as reckless, that marked President Viktor Yanukovich's rule contributed to his downfall in 2014 and left the country's
army
An army, ground force or land force is an armed force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or country. It may also include aviation assets by ...
ill-equipped to counter Russia's invasion of Crimea.
In 2008 Transparency International estimated that 30 to 50 percent of all Ukrainians had faced government corruption. Juhani Grossmann (working for an a.o. Management Systems International project) claimed in 2009 that "Ukrainians pay roughly ₴3.5 billion, or more than US$400 million, in bribes annually." The previous year, he claimed that the figure was US$700 million.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an American independent academic publishing company founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns ...
natural gas
Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...
to Ukraine and prevented the arrest of Boyko for abuse of office while heading Naftogaz:
In a 2005 interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "Turchynov stated that Yushchenko told him in mid-August to stop 'persecuting my men' and that the investigation of RosUkrEnergo was 'creating a conflict with Russian President
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
'". A 2008 survey showed that 73% of people in Ukraine considered the second Tymoshenko Government's actions against corruption ineffective; comparable figures for the U.S. and the UK were 73% and 39%.Transparency Internationa ''Global Corruption Barometer 2009'' Report , June 2, 2009, pdf Abs1:22, 32, 33. In Ukraine, 1200 people were interviewed face to face in a national survey November 4–12, 2008. The survey in the UK was of 1018 people interviewed online November 27 – December 1, 2008. The survey in the U.S. was of 1017 people interviewed online October 30 – November 4, 2008. (pdf ABs1:22). In a survey in 2001, when Kuchma was president, 80% of Ukrainians "totally/fairly agreed" with the statement: "The present government has no real interest in punishing corruption".
Ukraine joined the Group of States Against Corruption in 2006.
Over the years, several anti-corruption laws have been passed by the
Ukrainian parliament
The Verkhovna Rada ( ; VR), officially the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, is the unicameral parliament of Ukraine. It consists of 450 deputies presided over by a speaker. The Verkhovna Rada meets in the Verkhovna Rada building in Ukraine's capi ...
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
Kyiv
Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...
Interfax-Ukraine
Interfax-Ukraine () is a Ukrainian news agency. Founded in 1992, the company publishes in Ukrainian, Russian, English and German.
The company owns a 50-seat press centre.
The staff of the agency is 105 people (as of the end of February 2022)
...
(14 June 2018) In 2019 the High Anti-Corruption Court did start to work.
Due to the IMF concern that oligarchs would use the courts to seize bailout money, parliament passed a bill in 2020 to prevent courts from reversing bank nationalizations. The bill would combat a lawsuit by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and others seeking to regain control of PrivatBank, the recipient of a $5.5 billion 2016 bailout and an alleged "money laundering machine" under Kolomoisky.
In 2020, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled that anti-corruption legislation, including the mandatory electronic declaration of income, was unconstitutional. President Zelensky warned that if parliament did not restore these anti-corruption laws, foreign aid, loans and visa-free travel to the European Union were at risk. The Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine reported that Ukraine would not receive the scheduled $700 million IMF loan before the end of 2020 because of the issue. IMF assessment teams had not visited Kyiv for eight months. A visit was necessary for further IMF loan tranches to be released.
On 4 December 2020, the
Ukrainian parliament
The Verkhovna Rada ( ; VR), officially the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, is the unicameral parliament of Ukraine. It consists of 450 deputies presided over by a speaker. The Verkhovna Rada meets in the Verkhovna Rada building in Ukraine's capi ...
restored anti-corruption legislation shut down by the court decision, when it reauthorised criminal penalties for officials who provide false information about their incomes.Ukraine's parliament defies court ruling and restores anti-corruption legislation Euronews (4 December 2020) On 29 December 2020, PresidentVolodymyr Zelensky suspended the Constitutional Court's chairperson Oleksandr Tupytskyi for two months to overturn the court's October 2020 decision.Zelensky suspends Constitutional Court chair for two months UNIAN (29 December 2020)
On 19 July 2022, a commission created for selecting a new head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO, which oversees NABU) via an open competition procedure announced Oleksandr Klymenko as the winner of the competition, out of 37 candidates.
Public perception
According to Ukrainians, the most corrupt in the early 2010s were the
judiciary
The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...
, the
police
The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...
, public servants, the
health
Health has a variety of definitions, which have been used for different purposes over time. In general, it refers to physical and emotional well-being, especially that associated with normal functioning of the human body, absent of disease, p ...
service and
parliament
In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
The Ukrainian Week
''The Ukrainian Week'' (, ) is an illustrated weekly magazine and news outlet covering politics, economics and the arts and aimed at the socially engaged Ukrainian-language reader. It provides a range of analysis, opinion, interviews, feature p ...
(9 July 2013)
Corruption Perceptions Index ratings
Transparency International
Transparency International e.V. (TI) is a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, its nonprofit and non-governmental purpose is to take action to combat global corruption with civil s ...
produces an annual report listing each country's
Corruption Perceptions Index
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index that scores and ranks countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as assessed by experts and business executives. The CPI generally defines corruption as an "abuse of entr ...
score. This "score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts and, through 2011, ranged between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt)." From 2012 on, the scores were presented on a 0-100 scale.
The following table lists Ukraine's place in the Corruption Perceptions Index table, based on Transparency International's annual reports from 1999 onward. The method used to compute the scores changed in 2012 to allow a country's score to be compared from year to year. Prior to 2012, a country's score can only be meaningfully compared to the scores of other countries in the same year.
Note: For 1999 and 2000, the data were listed as 1998 and 1999 respectively. From 2001, the data listed are stated to be for the year of the annual report. Up to 2005, the annual report included some measures of the uncertainty of the index scores; these data were omitted from the annual reports from 2006 onwards, but were contained in the CPI report.
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...