Europe anticorruption group commends Ukraine progress in corruption prevention News
Dusan_Cvetanovic / Pixabay
Europe anticorruption group commends Ukraine progress in corruption prevention

The Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) published a new report on Thursday commending Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to combat corruption among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors. The report acknowledges Ukraine’s commitment to anti-corruption measures, especially given Russia’s ongoing invasion.

The report highlights that Ukraine has satisfactorily implemented 18 out of 31 recommendations given in a 2017 report aimed at enhancing transparency and integrity within its legislative, judicial and executive branches of government. This includes increased financial transparency stemming from the adoption of Law No. 3384-IX in 2023, which reintroduced mandatory asset declaration for government officials. Ukraine also implemented a law on lobbying, providing a framework to ensure that lobbying activities are ethical and accountable. Other areas of improvement include increased disciplinary liabilities for judges and strengthened accountability of the prosecution service.

GRECO also emphasizes the need for continued efforts, noting that 11 recommendations have only been partially implemented and that two remain unaddressed. The unimplemented recommendations pertain to introducing a system for the random allocation of cases to individual prosecutors and the precise definition of disciplinary offences related to prosecutors’ conduct, along with a broader range of disciplinary sanctions to ensure proportionality and effectiveness.

Ukraine has been marred by a series of corruption scandals in recent years. In 2023, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) found that a deputy minister had accepted over $40,000 in bribes. In February 2024, the Security Service of Ukraine uncovered an embezzlement case where two former defence ministry officials colluded with an arms company, leading to a fraudulent artillery sale using state funds. The NABU exposed a scheme to illegally acquire state-owned land worth $7 million led by a criminal group involving the country’s Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food in April 2024. In August 2024, the Deputy Minister of Energy was arrested for accepting a $50,000 bribery and intending to facilitate the transfer of state-owned mining equipment to a company.

GRECO encouraged Ukraine to fully implement all 13 recommendations.

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