Foresight-2023: Ukrainian corruption under the microscope of the West

What to expect on the anti-corruption front next year

The corruption of 2023 is the actual embezzlement of Western money. Under these conditions, will Bankova Street allow attacks on NABU and SAPO?

Next year, the entire Western world will be closely watching the results of the Ukrainian government's fight against corruption. This will happen because 60% of the national budget consists of the support from our allies, or rather, the money of taxpayers of Western countries. During the year, this percentage will increase. It is worth noting that without this money we will lose the war. In this regard, everything is extremely simple.

Under these conditions, any theft from the budget is an actual embezzlement of Western money. To steal from the budget now is to undermine the trust not even of the Western elites, but of the societies and voters of our partner states. That is a subversion of the trust, which is the key to obtaining weapons and money. Whoever steals state money is an internal enemy of the country, which means that appropriate preventive and mandatory measures should be used against such people.

Question: Do they steal? Yes, they do. This can be seen from the example of individual purchases. Is it a vertically constructed scheme orchestrated by the top political leadership? No, it doesn't look like it.

Rather, it seems that these people simply cannot get enough money for themselves. In addition, in this situation it does not matter whether they understand the consequences of their actions or are simply indifferent to them. Any more or less significant corruption scandal that gets into the global media can be a disaster for us. Our international partners will simply stop giving us money.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy understands the catastrophic consequences of any high-profile corruption scandal, so it seems that he restrains a part of his entourage that seeks to steal money from the state budget.

At the same time, neither the president nor society can guarantee that top officials will not build new corruption schemes during the war. After all, we simply do not have the opportunity to check them.

After February 24, the authorities closed access to key registers, information from which made the basis of all corruption investigations.

 

Unscrupulous judges remained in their positions, but some of their decisions and other important data began to disappear from the register. In general, more than a million court decisions have already been removed from open access, and new ones are almost never published.

The closed register of declarations hinders control over officials even more. In the first months of the war, the decision to completely cut off access to it probably made sense.

Is it necessary to hide declarations now? This is a serious question. Closed declarations of top officials definitely do not bring our victory closer. After all, we are talking about those who are already sitting quietly in Bankova Street and its surroundings, not about regional officials in the occupied regions and the military. There should be 100% exemptions for the ministers in the areas where hostilities are taking place because we simply do not have the moral right to distract them from what is happening at the front. However, the declarations were not simply hidden. People's deputies allowed themselves and others not to submit them at all, even in a closed register. After all, if there are no declarations, there is no punishment for lying in them. It's convenient, isn't it?

That is why restoring the declaration of officials and opening access to key state registers is one of the main tasks of the next year.

However, the most important means of anti-corruption fight will be the protection of NABU, SAPO and HACC.

Thanks to the appointment of Oleksandr Klymenko as the head of SAPO, this agency has shown truly impressive results in just the last few months:

• reopened the "Rotterdam+" case and presented 15 new suspicions in it;
• informed about suspicions in the cases of "Ukrnafta" and "Centrenergo", the schemes with which Kolomoiskyi's companies made money. By the way, the oligarch himself was searched, and he went to NABU for questioning at least twice, and HACC seized UAH 657 million from the accounts of a company related to his structures;
• exposed a criminal organization in Odesa, which was headed by local agents Kaufman and Borukhovych, and three deputy mayors of Odesa were involved in its schemes. Trukhanov himself is currently acting as a witness, but he is already going to NABU for interrogations;
• submitted to the court the cases concerning the People's Deputies Trukhin, Kuzminykh, Kolisnyk, Volynets and Kamelchuk;
• conducted searches in the office of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration Head Valentyn Reznichenko and a number of departments regarding frauds at tenders;
• former MP Maksym Mykytas was exposed for an attempt to give a record bribe of 22 million euros;
• the former head of the Federal Tax Service Roman Nasirov, agricultural baron Oleg Bakhmatyuk, ex-head of the SFS Kyrylo Shevchenko, and former deputy of the People's Republic Oleksandr Granovsky received their suspicions;
• the long-awaited case against "Mezhyhirya" in the charges against Viktor Yanukovych and his son was also referred to the court.

The unscrupulous part of Bankova and its "servants" perfectly understand that this is only the beginning. Therefore, the destruction or at least the neutralization of anti-corruption institutions is a question of survival for them. In order to do this the corrupt authorities can try to release Oleksandr Klymenko. It's very easy to do it now. For this, only a decision of the disciplinary commission controlled by the Prosecutor General and the order of Andriy Kostin are needed.

If the authorities dare do this, it will be the end of the effectiveness of NABU and SAPO. In this case, the duties of the chief anti-corruption prosecutor will be performed by Kostin himself and Andrii Sinyuk, the current deputy of Klymenko, who was promoted by Oleg Tatarov and Co. to the position of the SAPO head.

If it is not possible to release Klymenko, the corrupt officials will try to authorize the Prosecutor General, the SBU, the State Bureau of Investigation or the Pecherskyi District Court to take cases from NABU. Actually, this is how Bankova saved Tatarov from prison. Then they did it completely illegally. Now, through the Council, they will try to legalize the scheme by amending the law.

Our main task as a society is not only to repel these attacks, but also, thanks to changes to the legislation, to protect the head of the SAPO and all his successors from a politically motivated dismissal. In general, we have to protect NABU/SAPO/ HACC, their powers and key people. I am sure that the Western partners will be our allies in this matter. The same Western partners, without whose money and weapons our victory over Russia is not possible.

 

Another domestic front is the judicial reform. The complete reboot of the key judicial institutions – the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ), which we started back in 2021, became one of the main arguments in favor of granting us a candidate status in the EU. The beginning of negotiations on membership depends on the quality and success of the implementation of this reform. To fulfill this task and achieve the goal, we will need to try very hard. As soon as in January, a congress of judges will be held, at which the judges will elect eight members of the HCJ – without this, the institution will not be able to resume its work.

However, the judicial mafia has completely different plans: they are not interested in restoring the work of the HCJ. First of all, because most of their protégés had not passed the Ethics Council.

If the judicial mafia does manage to block the appointment of new members of the HCJ, it will take us at least another six months, or even a year. We cannot afford to extend the terms of this decision, because the High Council of Justice is the only body that can dismiss or at least remove a collaborating judge, appoint or transfer judges to places where they are critically needed, or punish a judge for disciplinary violations.

At the beginning of 2023, we are also waiting for the decisive phase of the competition for the High Qualification Commission of Judges. Recently, the competitive commission announced the list of 64 candidates who had passed to the next stage and are to be interviewed. We were somewhat disappointed to see some specific names in this list, however, we hope that the commission members will make an effort to distinguish the wheat from the chaff and recommend the best ones, the number which is sufficient for the competition. We will help them in every possible way.

 

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So, I started this article by saying that we do not see examples of systemic corruption. Such, which is organized by the first persons of the state and which takes huge flows of budget funds. At the same time, we see more and more signs of preparations for the introduction of such schemes for the post-war period. Part of the political community is already preparing to steal the money that the West will allocate for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

As soon as these attempts become obscenely numerous, we will have to stop them in a public way. A big request to the authorities: do not bring the situation to this stage. Now is not the time...

Now let's imagine that we win the war in 2023, and the money in question is immediately sent to Ukraine. It will come, obviously, by installments. Any attempt to steal it will only lead to one thing - we will not receive the next tranches. No country will put its citizens' taxes in the hands of a government that will steal them.

So even when NABU punishes the thieves, we will not be better off because of this - we will already lose the money for reconstruction. This is precisely the case when it is much more important to prevent a crime than to later punish those guilty for committing it.

The only way to avoid this scenario is to deprive the authorities of any influence on the appointment of contractors who will use this money. Undoubtedly, the government should determine WHAT to build, but not WHO will do it.

The money that the West and other partners will give for post-war reconstruction should not go directly to the general budget or any government-controlled fund. It can come through special programs of the World Bank or the IMF or through a specially created fund controlled by the donators themselves.

I am not sure that in this case there will definitely be no corruption. However, it will not be our problem. If they try to steal there and this is revealed (it will be revealed for sure), it will not matter to us - it will not affect the amount of money that will be allocated for Ukraine by the Western partners.

It is also self-deception to think that some IT tools will save this money from theft. They will help to see corruption - yes, prevent theft - definitely not. Let me remind you that the “Big Construction” cartel stole our taxes through the Prozorro system. The latter is undoubtedly the best IT solution in the procurement system. So, did it help much? That’s it.

To sum up. Officials who steal during the war are internal enemies because they endanger the Western support the country needs. Next year, they will make every effort to destroy NABU/SAPO. The same people will block the restoration of electronic declaration and access to state registers. The judicial mafia will try to block the launch of the renewed High Council of Justice.

These government officials will not do anything good for Ukraine for the simple reason that their plans are obvious to us and our Western partners. We understand exactly how we will counter them and their plans. In addition, we know for sure that these people will end up on the garbage heap of history. Sorry for my hateful rhetoric, times are like this, you know.