On June 16, Members of Parliament registered two draft laws at once, both intended to improve Ukraine’s Criminal Procedure Code as it applies to the investigation and trial of top-level corruption cases. 

These are Draft Laws No. 15333 and No. 15334, authored by MPs Yaroslav Zhelezniak, Anastasiia Radina, and others. The first proposes a package of amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (CPC of Ukraine) concerning the time limits for pre-trial investigation and countering the abuse of procedural rights. The second concerns improving the rules for determining investigative jurisdiction and the procedural framework for international cooperation.

Both are designed to fulfill the requirements of the “Kachka-Kos Plan” for European integration and to bring Ukraine closer to EU membership by delivering on specific measures set out in the Rule of Law Roadmap. 

Key takeaways:

• Draft Laws No. 15333 and No. 15334 would resolve the problems of unjustified case closures once investigation deadlines expire, the dragging-out of trials, the unlawful investigation of NABU cases by other agencies, and the limited powers of the Head of SAPO in matters of international legal assistance;
• these acts are aimed at meeting the requirements of the Rule of Law Roadmap and the Kachka-Kos list;

• some of the legislative proposals should nonetheless be refined to achieve the best effect in practice. 

What we propose:

In Draft Law No. 15333:

• retain judicial oversight over the extension of pre-trial investigation deadlines to 6, 12, and — should this draft law pass — 18 months;
• strengthen the mechanisms for responding to violations of reasonable time limits in pre-trial investigation, in particular by improving Article 308 of the CPC of Ukraine;
• clarify the conditions for suspending court proceedings due to the mobilization of the defendant;
• allow monetary penalties to be imposed on defense counsel for failing to appear when summoned without valid reasons.

In Draft Law No. 15334, a provision should be added to allow the Head of SAPO to open criminal proceedings against Members of Parliament.

How do things stand now?

Currently, the application of the CPC of Ukraine in investigating and trying top corruption cases has revealed opportunities for abuse and delay, creating unjustified obstacles to holding people criminally liable.

On the time limits for pre-trial investigation after a notification of suspicion:

1. at present, under Article 284(1)(10) of the CPC of Ukraine, criminal proceedings may be closed simply because the case was sent to court after the pre-trial investigation period had lapsed — even by just one to three days;
2. the CPC of Ukraine provides no separate mechanism allowing a victim or the defense to ask an investigating judge to order the prosecutor to complete the pre-trial investigation once the relevant deadline has passed; it does, however, require the prosecutor under Article 308 to respond to any failure to observe reasonable investigation timeframes;
3. the maximum period of pre-trial investigation after a notification of suspicion is 12 months;
4. the head of a prosecutor’s office may extend the pre-trial investigation period up to 3 months, while extensions to 6 and 12 months may be granted only by an investigating judge.

On preventing abuse of procedural rights:

1. the systematic failure of defense counsel to appear when summoned — including for court hearings — is not clearly established as a standalone ground for bringing in defense counsel from the free legal aid (FLA) system. Nor does the law expressly prohibit filing and considering certain motions, applications, and complaints that have been submitted repeatedly or contain offensive or indecent language;
2. courts are often forced to adjourn hearings because some participants in the proceedings fail to appear, even without valid reasons. Formally, the law does not establish that the presence of at least one of the defendant’s defense lawyers is sufficient to realize the right to a defense. And bringing in a new defense counsel or prosecutor — even when the previous ones are still taking part in the proceedings — is often used as grounds for adjournment;
3. suspending court proceedings due to the mobilization of the defendant is possible only in cases involving grave and especially grave corruption offenses, and only if it is proven that the defendant cannot take part directly because of their involvement in Ukraine’s defense efforts;
4. where a trial is being dragged out, the law does not expressly empower the presiding judge to limit the parties’ speaking time during closing arguments and the final statement.

On extending the duration of obligations as part of preventive measures: current law allows a court to impose on the suspect or the defendant any of the procedural obligations listed in Article 194(5) of the CPC of Ukraine in connection with a preventive measure for a maximum of two months, with the possibility of extension.

On NABU’s investigative jurisdiction and its powers in international cooperation:

1. NABU’s jurisdiction based on the category of official does not expressly extend to corruption and corruption-related offenses committed by the leadership of the State Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the President of Ukraine, and the state, military, and military-civil administrations of the regions and of the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol; by senior command staff of the Economic Security Bureau and the State Bureau of Investigation; or by deputy heads, supervisory board members, and members of the executive bodies (management boards, directorates) of state-owned and municipal large enterprises. And the mechanism for transferring cases to NABU under the rules of jurisdiction is not regulated in any way;
2. the Head of SAPO cannot, without the Prosecutor General, independently set up joint investigation teams as part of international cooperation, nor send extradition requests on their own.

What the draft laws propose

Draft Law No. 15333 proposes three blocks of changes.

1. On the time limits for pre-trial investigation after a notification of suspicion:

• remove the expiry of the pre-trial investigation period after a notification of suspicion from the list of grounds for closing criminal proceedings (Article 284(1)(10) of the CPC of Ukraine);
• introduce a mechanism whereby, if the pre-trial investigation deadline expires, the victim or the defense would have the right to ask an investigating judge to order the prosecutor to complete the pre-trial investigation;
• increase the maximum pre-trial investigation period after a notification of suspicion to 18 months;
• provide that the pre-trial investigation period after a notification of suspicion is extended to 6 and 12 months by the head of the prosecutor’s office, and to 18 months by an investigating judge.

1. On preventing abuse of procedural rights:

• allow defense counsel from the FLA system to be brought in where the suspect’s or the defendant’s own lawyers systematically (twice or more) fail to appear when summoned by the investigator, prosecutor, or court;
• allow the court to decline to consider motions to apply measures to secure the proceedings, motions during the trial, and appeals, cassation appeals, and applications to review decisions on the basis of newly discovered or exceptional circumstances, where such applications, complaints, and motions have been filed repeatedly or contain offensive or indecent language;
• allow the trial to continue in the absence of certain participants who were duly notified but failed to appear when summoned, while giving them the opportunity to set out their position in writing and present it at the next hearing;
• formally establish that, to ensure the right to a defense, the participation of all of the defendant’s lawyers in a hearing is not mandatory — the presence of at least one is enough;
• provide that a hearing will not be adjourned to allow new prosecutors or defense counsel to familiarize themselves with the case file, so long as the previous prosecutors or defense counsel continue to take part in the hearing;
• enshrine in Article 335 of the CPC the court’s right to suspend proceedings on a charge of any criminal offense where the defendant is performing military service and is unable to take part in the trial;
• give the court the ability, where it finds that a participant is abusing their procedural rights, to limit the length of any of that participant’s addresses.

1. To streamline the process of extending the duration of obligations, it is proposed to give the court the ability, for up to 6 months, to prohibit a suspect (or the defendant) subject to a preventive measure from leaving the country, from leaving certain localities (districts, regions), and from visiting certain areas; to prohibit them from communicating with specific individuals; and to require them to appear when summoned and to report any change of residence or workplace.

Draft Law No. 15334 proposes to expand NABU’s investigative jurisdiction and to resolve the questions around the powers of the Head of SAPO as follows:

• extend NABU’s jurisdiction to corruption and corruption-related offenses committed by the leadership of the SBI, the Office of the President of Ukraine, and the state, military, and military-civil administrations of the regions and of the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol; by senior command staff of the ESBU and the SBI; and by deputy heads, supervisory board members, and members of the executive bodies (management boards, directorates) of state-owned and municipal large enterprises;
• regulate the transfer of cases to NABU under the rules of jurisdiction by setting a deadline for handing over the materials and for the prosecutor’s decision determining such jurisdiction;
• empower the Head of SAPO to set up joint investigation teams as part of international cooperation and to send extradition requests independently.

The advantages of the proposed changes

The registered draft laws can be seen as a logical response to the problems that stand in the way of effectively investigating and trying criminal proceedings. They almost entirely remove the risk of proceedings being closed over investigation deadlines and the problem of procedural rights being used to the detriment of the process, and they fill some of the procedural gaps.

Removing the option to close a case over an expired investigation period

Pre-trial investigation deadlines were introduced by the “Lozovyi amendments,” passed in 2017. They were supposedly meant to guard against unjustifiably long criminal prosecution, yet the problem of pressure on business does not appear to have been solved. Their partial repeal in 2023 did not fully fix the issue, because the law retained the rule in Article 284(1)(10) of the CPC of Ukraine, which still allows criminal proceedings to be closed over a purely formal expiry of the pre-trial investigation deadline — even by just one to three days.

The most recent telling example is the Dubnevych case concerning the misappropriation of Ukrzaliznytsia’s funds. On May 26, 2026, the HACC granted a defense motion and, on this ground, closed the criminal proceedings against former MP Yaroslav Dubnevych and his accomplices over the misappropriation of UAH 93 million from Ukrzaliznytsia. This is not the first time the case has been closed — back in September 2022, the HACC had already closed it on the same ground.

In its monitoring of the HACC, TI Ukraine has stressed that closing criminal proceedings is a disproportionate response and an opening for manipulation and abuse. The European Commission stated directly that the provision on the automatic closure of criminal proceedings over expired pre-trial investigation deadlines must be removed from the CPC of Ukraine — that is, the element of the “Lozovyi amendments” still in force must finally be scrapped.

 In this context, an equally important innovation could be the introduction of a maximum 18-month pre-trial investigation period after a notification of suspicion, where the investigation requires a significant volume of investigative (search) and procedural actions, as well as international cooperation. Even longer investigation periods are permitted under the laws of European countries such as Latvia and Italy.

Building safeguards against abuse and delay

Until now, Ukraine’s criminal justice system has lacked adequate tools for responding to abuse, which can seriously stall investigations and trials — and some bad-faith participants make active use of this.

In its latest report monitoring HACC cases, the TI Ukraine team found that it is most often the defense that resorts to abuse during hearings, doing everything to drag them out through unfounded recusals, the non-appearance of participants, unreasonably long addresses, and the filing of identical applications and motions.

Because of these abuses, a significant share of HACC cases were, or still are, at risk of closure. Perhaps the loudest example is the gas embezzlement episode in the “Onyshchenko case” involving Roman Nasirov, where unreasonably long addresses, the mobilization of the defendant, non-appearance of defense counsel, and the like were all used. As a result, the case ended in a verdict only a few days before the statute of limitations for holding Nasirov liable expired.

Draft Law No. 15333 offers real tools to combat such tactics, including the ability to halt unreasonably long addresses and set time limits on them; to continue a hearing in the absence of certain participants and bring in new defense counsel or prosecutors; to bring in FLA defense counsel where a retained lawyer fails to appear twice in a row; to have the court decline to consider repetitive and offensive motions; and to permanently enshrine in Article 335 of the CPC of Ukraine the rule that a trial cannot be automatically suspended solely because the defendant has been mobilized.

International experience likewise confirms that the proposed changes are entirely workable and effective.

Extending NABU’s jurisdiction to more top officials

Alongside the package of procedural changes, in Draft Law No. 15334 the MPs propose extending NABU’s jurisdiction to:

• the leadership of the SBI, the Office of the President of Ukraine, and the state, military, and military-civil administrations of the regions and of the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol;
• senior command staff of the ESBU and the SBI;
• deputy heads and members of the supervisory boards and executive bodies (management boards, directorates) of state-owned and municipal large enterprises.

Tellingly, two years ago NABU exposed suspected corruption by former Deputy Head of the Office of the President Andrii Smyrnov. And the defense tried to exploit the imperfections of Ukraine’s Criminal Code and CPC to convince the investigating judge that NABU had no right to investigate the case against him — in particular because Smyrnov’s position does not appear in the list of cases falling under NABU’s jurisdiction set out in Article 216(5) of the CPC of Ukraine. The European Commission, too, insisted on extending jurisdiction to cover all top positions.

At the same time, the MPs are refining the mechanism and time limits for requesting and transferring cases to NABU under the rules of jurisdiction.

What should be improved

Although both draft laws resolve a large share of the pressing problems, certain provisions should, in our view, be refined so that they can be applied effectively in practice in the future.

Do not hand prosecutors judicial oversight over the extension of deadlines

Returning to the heads of prosecutor’s offices the power to extend pre-trial investigation deadlines to 6 and 12 months creates a risk of weaker judicial oversight over compliance with reasonable pre-trial investigation time. After all, the proposed approach means such a decision would be taken by a representative of the prosecution — a party with a procedural interest in prolonging the investigation.

This weakens the principle of adversarial proceedings. Judicial oversight in such matters is a guarantee that any extension will be justified, proportionate, and necessary.

The Constitutional Court has not expressed a position on the need for judicial oversight over the extension of pre-trial investigation deadlines. But its position on such oversight generally comes down to this: the rule of law makes judicial oversight over any interference with a person’s right to liberty mandatory. Criminal proceedings are themselves a precondition for applying the harshest restrictions on human rights and freedoms compared to any other legal process. Judicial oversight over the extension of pre-trial investigation deadlines — on which the duration of such restrictions depends — is therefore no less important a guarantee of respect for human rights and freedoms during criminal prosecution.

Such proposals may also raise doubts in light of the constitutional prohibition on narrowing the content and scope of existing rights and freedoms when adopting new laws or amending existing ones. The extension of pre-trial investigation deadlines to 6, 12, and 18 months should therefore remain within the competence of the investigating judge.

Improve the existing mechanism for overseeing reasonable investigation time

Along with removing the automatic closure of cases over expired investigation deadlines (Article 284(1)(10) of the CPC of Ukraine), the authors of the draft law propose giving participants in criminal proceedings the right to ask an investigating judge to order the prosecutor to complete the pre-trial investigation.

A similar provision appeared in government Draft Law No. 12367. At the time, TI Ukraine pointed out that this could place a substantial additional burden on the court system. To reduce that burden and to improve the legislation systematically, the changes should be made not to Article 284 of the CPC of Ukraine, which governs the list of grounds for closing criminal proceedings, but to Article 308, which governs the procedure for challenging an investigator’s or prosecutor’s failure to observe reasonable time limits. Specifically, if a higher-level prosecutor rejects the complaint, the interested party could then turn to an investigating judge, who should be able to issue the very decisions that the MPs propose adding to Article 284 of the CPC of Ukraine.

In addition, the law could expressly provide that evidence whose gathering was initiated outside the pre-trial investigation period (with certain exceptions) is inadmissible. This could serve both as a safeguard against abuse and as a proper incentive in investigations. 

It is therefore more sensible not to create a new mechanism, but to improve the tools that already exist.

Regulate more clearly the suspension of court proceedings due to military service

In 2025, after Nasirov’s “sudden” mobilization, Parliament limited the ability to suspend the hearing of grave and especially grave corruption cases based solely on the defendant’s formal status as someone performing military service. In such proceedings, the court must establish that the defendant is objectively unable to take part in the proceedings — including remotely — because of their direct involvement in measures to defend Ukraine.

Draft Law No. 15333 proposes moving this logic to Article 335 of the CPC of Ukraine and extending it beyond grave and especially grave corruption offenses to other criminal proceedings as well. On the whole, this is the right approach.

However, the proposed wording remains too broad. It could allow proceedings to be suspended even where the defendant is in a location from which remote participation in a hearing is realistic and does not interfere with the performance of their military duties.

It would therefore be advisable to provide that a trial may be suspended only where the defendant have no objective possibility of taking part in hearings because of their genuine involvement in Ukraine’s defense efforts directly in the areas where those efforts are carried out — on temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, or in the zone between the positions of the defense forces and those of the aggressor state’s troops — during the period of those efforts, and where they are carrying out combat (special) tasks. 

Allow the court to impose monetary penalties for non-appearance without valid reasons

Countering the abuse of procedural rights could be reinforced by a monetary penalty for defense lawyers who fail to appear when summoned to court without valid reasons. The statistics of the HACC alone show that the second most common reason for adjourning hearings is the non-appearance of defense counsel — over five years of the court’s work, 588 hearings were adjourned for this reason.

In monitoring HACC cases, TI Ukraine has repeatedly observed how the non-appearance of defense counsel at hearings seriously affects the reasonable timeframes for hearing a case. Striking examples of this were the hearings in the case against the former Minister of Justice under Yanukovych and the case against the judges of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv.

So, in addition to the suspect, the defendant, witnesses, victims, and other participants, it makes sense to also allow the court to fine defense lawyers who fail to appear at hearings without valid reasons.

Allow the Head of SAPO to open investigations against MPs

Along with the changes to the Head of SAPO’s powers regarding international legal assistance, it is logical to remove an obstacle to investigating cases involving Members of Parliament. The point is that only the Prosecutor General can open an investigation against MPs.

Such changes are one of the EU’s key requirements. We have also repeatedly seen how this can stall an investigation and, with it, diminish the quality and quantity of the evidence gathered. One of the first notable examples of a case against an MP was the investigation into Oleksandr Yurchenko. In September 2020, the NABU publicly reported that it had sent Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova the materials and a draft suspicion for registering the proceedings and serving the notification of suspicion. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office replied that it saw insufficient grounds for registering proceedings.

To avoid such situations, the Head of the SAPO should be empowered to open investigations against Members of Parliament independently, without the Prosecutor General.

Conclusions

Overall, Draft Laws No. 15333 and No. 15334 are a systematic and long-overdue response to a set of problems that for years have hampered the effective investigation and trial of top-level corruption cases — from the automatic closure of proceedings over a formal expiry of deadlines to procedural abuse and gaps in NABU’s jurisdiction. Of course, resolving all of them will require far more changes.

TI Ukraine supports the adoption of both draft laws, as they bring Ukraine closer to meeting the requirements of the Ukraine Facility, the Rule of Law Roadmap, and the Kachka-Kos Plan. At the same time, several points are worth improving during committee review and consideration in the session hall.

In Draft Law No. 15333:

• retain judicial oversight over the extension of pre-trial investigation deadlines to 6, 12, and — should this draft law pass — 18 months;
• strengthen the existing mechanisms for responding to violations of reasonable time limits, in particular by improving Article 308 of the CPC of Ukraine, which sets out the procedure for challenging an investigator’s or prosecutor’s failure to observe reasonable time limits, by establishing clear consequences where a prosecutor takes no action once deadlines have expired;
• set out a rule under which court proceedings could be suspended due to military service only where the defendant is objectively unable to take part in hearings — including remotely — because of their direct involvement in measures to defend Ukraine;
• allow monetary penalties to be imposed on defense counsel for non-appearance.

In Draft Law No. 15334, add a provision allowing the Head of the SAPO to open criminal proceedings against Members of Parliament.

Fine-tuning these provisions will preserve the balance between the effectiveness of criminal prosecution and the guarantees of the rights of those involved in the process.

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.