Statute of Limitations in Corruption Cases: A Legal Analysis of Draft Law No. 15354

On June 26, 2026, MPs Yaroslav Zhelezniak, Anastasiia Radina, Iryna Herashchenko, and others registered Draft Law No. 15354, amending Article 49 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (the Criminal Code), which is meant to improve the rules for calculating the statute of limitations for bringing a person to criminal liability.

According to the authors’ explanatory note, this draft law will help ensure the inevitability of criminal punishment for intentional criminal offenses, increase the effectiveness of court proceedings, and close the legislative gaps that allow offenders to evade liability by artificially dragging out the trial.

The need to improve the regulation of the statute of limitations has long been recognized in state policy documents and forms part of international recommendations. It is set out, in particular, in the Roadmap on the Rule of Law, as well as in the joint statement by Marta Kos and Taras Kachka. We at TI Ukraine have long drawn attention to this problem and proposed ways to solve it.

Key takeaways:

• Draft Law No. 15354 addresses the right questions — in particular, it aims to improve the rules that let defendants in corruption cases avoid criminal liability once the statute of limitations expires;
• however, the effectiveness of the proposed provisions may not be as high as declared, for a number of reasons, including the absence of comprehensive amendments and flaws in the drafting of the proposed rule.

What we propose:

• not to suspend the statute of limitations from the moment the indictment is referred to court, but instead either to interrupt its running — that is, to start counting it anew — or to provide that these periods run until the first-instance court delivers its verdict;
• to extend the suspension of the statute of limitations on account of a defendant’s mobilization to all criminal proceedings concerning corruption and corruption-related criminal offenses provided for in the note to Article 45 of the Criminal Code;
• to proportionately increase the penalties for certain corruption criminal offenses, and to add the performance of procedural actions within international cooperation as a ground for suspending their running.

How do things stand now?

The current Criminal Code provides that the running of the statute of limitations is suspended only where a person has evaded pre-trial investigation or trial. Meanwhile, a defendant’s military service — which may lead to the suspension of the court proceedings against them — does not, for instance, suspend the running of the statute of limitations.

Referring a case to court likewise does not suspend the running of the statute of limitations. What is more, these periods continue to run right up until the verdict enters into legal force — until the 30-day window for appeal expires, or until appellate review is completed.

What Draft Law No. 15354 proposes

Draft Law No. 15354 proposes the following changes:

1. automatically suspending the running of the statute of limitations in NABU and SAPO cases if the defendant is performing military service and the court proceedings against them are suspended;
2. moving the point at which the statute of limitations is suspended in cases involving grave and especially grave corruption criminal offenses from the moment the verdict enters into legal force to the moment the indictment is referred to court.

What are the advantages of the proposed changes?

Draft Law No. 15354 responds to the fact that in a number of NABU cases the statute of limitations expires — something we have noted more than once as part of our multi-year project monitoring cases at the High Anti-Corruption Court. This often happens because of the considerable time taken by international legal assistance, lengthy expert examinations, the late transfer of a case to the NABU, or the abuse of procedural rights by participants in court proceedings.

For example, in October 2025 the HACC closed the criminal proceedings against former Minister of Infrastructure Andrii Pyvovarskyi due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. In July this year, the HACC closed — again on statute-of-limitations grounds — the case of Liudmyla Solotva, who was accused of aiding and abetting Nasirov. The case of Roman Nasirov himself was also on the verge of being closed. It was heard across two instances for 6.5 years and was accompanied by numerous delays on the part of the defense, so that Nasirov received his verdict just a few days before the ten-year statute of limitations set by the Criminal Code expired.

A similar problem appears in other high-profile proceedings — for instance, in the UMCC case, where one of the defendants mobilized, which almost completely paralyzed the normal course of the trial. And while no proper trial on the merits takes place, the statute of limitations in the case keeps running.

This is why the very idea behind the draft law is correct: the statute of limitations should not stand in the way of holding to account persons who are performing military service. Nor should the completion of appellate review become the point at which the counting of these periods stops.

If a case has already been referred to court, the state should not lose the chance to obtain a decision on the merits merely because the trial is taking a long time, or because participants in the process are dragging it out. This is especially important for corruption cases.

What should be improved

Interrupting, rather than suspending, the statute of limitations could offer more guarantees to participants in court proceedings 

The authors of the draft law propose that the statute of limitations be suspended upon the referral of the indictment to court only in cases of grave and especially grave corruption criminal offenses. And there is only one ground for resuming the periods — a court ruling returning the indictment. 

However, the Criminal Code provides that the special, undifferentiated limitation period — after which a person who has committed a crime of any gravity is released from criminal liability, even if they evaded justice — is 15 years. This conclusion was also confirmed by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court in 2023. The same period is set for especially grave criminal offenses, while for grave ones it is 10 years. It therefore follows from the proposed changes that, compared with the current rules, only 5 additional years would be “gained” for grave corruption crimes.

At the same time, we should point out the not-entirely-successful drafting of the amendments. Under the proposed version of Article 49(2) of the Criminal Code, the sentence “In these cases, the running of the limitation period resumes from the day the person surrenders with a confession or is detained, and from the time a criminal misdemeanor was committed — after five years” is placed immediately after the description of the new ground for suspension — mobilization or acceptance for military service under contract. As a result, in light of the amendments, this wording — “the person surrenders with a confession” and “is detained” — will apply to the person’s mobilization, rather than (as the authors presumably intended) to the person’s evasion of pre-trial investigation or trial. 

This drafting inaccuracy creates a real risk that the new rule will be interpreted ambiguously.

Beyond this, the very approach of suspending the statute of limitations upon the referral of the indictment to court creates additional problems:

• there is no substantive rule on the grounds for resuming the running of the limitation period, since the return of an indictment does not happen all that often in NABU and SAPO practice;
• extending this rule only to cases of grave and especially grave corruption criminal offenses is an inaccurate and unjustified narrowing. In that case, the legislator’s response leaves out the less grave corruption and corruption-related crimes provided for in Articles 366-2 and 366-3, Article 369-2(1) and (2), Article 369(1), Article 364(1), and Article 191(2).

In view of this, a more balanced solution would be not to suspend the statute of limitations from the moment the indictment is referred to court, but to interrupt its running. Alternatively, it could be provided that these periods run until the first-instance court delivers its verdict.

Such an approach would preserve the incentive for the parties and the court to hear a case without unjustified delays, while at the same time preventing situations in which a case has already been heard on the merits and a verdict delivered, yet the person is released from liability solely because the statute of limitations expired at the appellate-review stage. That said, if the limitation period is to run until the first-instance court delivers its verdict, the court should be given robust tools to counter the abuse of procedural rights

Changes to the statute-of-limitations rules should cover all corruption and corruption-related offenses

The authors of the draft law propose suspending the statute of limitations in the event of military service only where a case is investigated by NABU or referred to court by a SAPO prosecutor.

The problem is that corruption and top-level corruption cases are sometimes investigated not only by NABU, but also by the SBI, the National Police, and the ESBU. According to the statistics, most corruption verdicts are handed down by local courts on the basis of materials from these bodies; and although such cases are generally less complex, there are far more of them. According to the latest data for 2025, local courts convicted 3,268 persons of corruption and corruption-related criminal offenses provided for in the note to Article 45 of the Criminal Code.

Since the Criminal Code already contains a list of such criminal offenses, it would be more systematic, in terms of legal regulation, to suspend the running of the statute of limitations on account of a suspect’s/defendant’s mobilization not only in NABU and SAPO cases, but in all cases concerning the criminal offenses provided for in the note to Article 45 of the Criminal Code.

In addition, Draft Law No. 15333 proposes to improve the grounds for suspending a trial by extending them not only to persons accused of a grave or especially grave corruption criminal offense, but to all criminal proceedings. It is therefore hard to trace any clear logic in why the running of the statute of limitations should be suspended in the event of military service only where a case is investigated by NABU or referred to court by a SAPO prosecutor. 

Accordingly, the suspension of the statute of limitations on account of a defendant’s mobilization should be extended to all criminal proceedings concerning corruption and corruption-related criminal offenses provided for in the note to Article 45 of the Criminal Code.

The statute-of-limitations rules require comprehensive changes 

Given that the authors of the draft law acknowledge the problems with regulating the statute of limitations, a comprehensive overhaul of this institution should be ensured.

As part of its monitoring of HACC cases, TI Ukraine has systematically examined the question of the statute of limitations in corruption cases and concluded that the statute of limitations for bringing a person to criminal liability needs to be improved in several directions: 

• proportionately strengthening criminal liability for certain criminal offenses, which would in turn lengthen the corresponding limitation periods; 
• establishing additional grounds for suspending the running of the limitation period — for example, mutual legal assistance in criminal proceedings; 
• changing the end point for calculating the statute of limitations for bringing a person to criminal liability (to the delivery of the first-instance verdict, rather than the entry of the verdict into legal force).

Comparing the statute of limitations for bringing offenders to criminal liability for various corruption crimes in EU member states and in Ukraine, we can conclude that for certain acts our limitation periods are unjustifiably short. This is most pronounced for obstruction of justice, but also for bribery in the public sector (Articles 368 and 369 of the Criminal Code), bribery in the private sector (Article 354 of the Criminal Code), trading in influence (Article 369-2 of the Criminal Code), and abuse of office (Article 364 of the Criminal Code).

Moreover, the legislation of foreign states and international recommendations point to a much broader list of grounds for suspending the statute of limitations. In particular, the 2007 UN Model Law on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters provides for suspending the running of the limitation period for the time a mutual legal assistance request is being executed. The criminal legislation of EU member states additionally singles out, as grounds for suspension, the existence of immunity and other legally established obstacles to prosecution, the minority or illness of the alleged offender, and the referral of a case for additional investigation. Among the grounds for interrupting the periods, a number of jurisdictions include the initiation of a criminal prosecution, the issuance of an international or European Arrest Warrant, the official recognition of a person as a suspect, as well as any procedural notification to the person — a summons, a call to appear, or the holding of a confrontation.

In light of the above, consideration should be given to expanding the list of grounds for suspending the limitation period, at least as regards the performance of procedural actions within international cooperation. Such an expansion should be accompanied by appropriate safeguards against abuse by pre-trial investigation bodies — in particular, by empowering the court that will decide on release from criminal liability to verify that the relevant procedural actions within international cooperation were justified and genuine.

Therefore, to improve the statute of limitations for bringing a person to criminal liability, the penalties for certain corruption criminal offenses should be proportionately increased, and the performance of procedural actions within international cooperation should be added as a ground for suspending their running.

Conclusions

Overall, Draft Law No. 15354 is something of a response to problems that have already arisen repeatedly during the hearing of corruption cases. We recommend that the Verkhovna Rada adopt Draft Law No. 15354 as a basis, subject to revision. 

Ahead of the second reading, the text of the draft law should be refined on the following points:

1. not to suspend the statute of limitations from the moment the indictment is referred to court, but instead either to interrupt its running — that is, to start counting it anew — or to provide that these periods run until the first-instance court delivers its verdict;
2. to extend the suspension of the statute of limitations on account of a defendant’s mobilization to all criminal proceedings concerning corruption and corruption-related criminal offenses provided for in the note to Article 45 of the Criminal Code;
3. to proportionately increase the penalties for certain corruption criminal offenses, and to add the performance of procedural actions within international cooperation as a ground for suspending their running.

This publication has been produced with financial support from Norway. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of Transparency International Ukraine and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the Government of Norway.