Come Back Alive

According to the foundation, as of October 15, 2026, it had received more than UAH 275 million (UAH 275,412,872.21) under plea agreements.

By period, the receipts were as follows:

• 2024: UAH 32,000,000.00;
• 2025: UAH 67,540,741.00;
• January 1 to October 15, 2026: UAH 175,872,131.21.

The foundation also stated in its response that it had not received any property, property rights, or crypto assets in execution of such agreements.

On the use of the money, Come Back Alive described separately the aid already delivered and the procurement still underway.

According to the foundation, UAH 214,854,555.07 was spent on procuring equipment and other supplies and handing them over to the military in three areas:

• UAH 81,718,129.61 to meet the needs of Army Aviation units of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
• UAH 12,729,795.00 to meet the needs of units of the 19th Army Corps of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
• UAH 120,406,630.46 to implement the DRONEFALL project.

Another UAH 60,558,317.14 was still being spent as of October 15. Of this amount, UAH 4.36 million is going toward procurement for Army Aviation and UAH 56.2 million toward funding DRONEFALL. Once the procurement is completed, the aid is handed over, and the paperwork is finalized, the foundation will publish the relevant reports.

In its response, Come Back Alive also cited data from the units participating in DRONEFALL, according to which 499 Russian reconnaissance and strike UAVs had been shot down using the equipment provided.

Sternenko Community

The Sternenko Community Foundation reported receiving funds in execution of agreements in five criminal cases. In total, these amounted to UAH 51 million and 20,021 USDT. The USDT was valued at UAH 888,932.49 at the exchange rate on the date it was credited. As a result, the total receipts amounted to almost UAH 52 million (UAH 51,888,932.49) in hryvnia equivalent.

In its response, the foundation provided the following breakdown of receipts:

• 2025: UAH 49 million under three HACC decisions; 
• first three quarters of 2026: UAH 2 million and 20,021 USDT under two HACC decisions.

The foundation explained that it received no funds in 2023–2024 because it was registered as a legal entity only on January 15, 2025.

The funds received under the agreements were spent in full on procuring equipment for the Defense Forces, with the following breakdown of expenditures:

• 1,930 Hornet FPV drones of various modifications, worth a total of UAH 49,376,680.00 (from the case concerning the procurement of PCR tests for a Ukrzaliznytsia branch, the case against one of the organizers of the scheme to misappropriate the seized “Kurchenko’s oil products,” and the case against an accomplice in the misappropriation of almost 920 hectares of land belonging to the state enterprise Research Farm Dmytrivka);
• 25 Sting R4 UAVs with digital thermal imaging cameras, worth a total of UAH 2,090,000.00 (the case of Oleksii Statnyk, former director of a Ukrzaliznytsia branch);
• one Mavka unmanned aircraft system (digital, daytime version), worth a total of UAH 1,983,400.00 (the case against the former director of the state enterprise Poltava Region Local Roads Agency).

The foundation also explained why the total value of the aid, UAH 53.45 million, exceeds the UAH 51.89 million received under the agreements. The difference of approximately UAH 1.56 million was covered by other charitable donations.

Sternenko Community stated that it will publish reporting materials once the procurement is completed, the property is handed over, and the supporting documents are finalized.

How to track the use of funds

In their responses, the foundations provided links to their public reporting resources. Come Back Alive referred to its reporting section, materials on its website, and its social media posts. According to the foundation, these contain information on the contributions it receives and how they are used, including receipts under plea agreements. 

Sternenko Community provided a link to its own reporting section. Its website features daily reports on drone deliveries, reports on other property handed over, and calendar-based reporting.

As we can see, the data obtained on receipts from plea agreements and their use demonstrate the transparency and reliability of the Come Back Alive and Sternenko Community charitable foundations. This once again underscores that, despite public concerns and doubts about the misuse of funds received under plea agreements, donations to the army, including through private charitable foundations, are an important condition of plea agreements, given the context in which the criminal justice system currently operates. 

According to the SAPO, no cases of intentional non-compliance with plea agreements have been identified so far, and no convicted person has been held liable for breaching the terms of an agreement. Compliance is confirmed by payment documents, which are submitted to the court and the prosecutor and added to the case file. In other words, the transfer of funds is verified, but solely by the SAPO. 

At the same time, public communication about how these specific plea agreement funds are spent remains rather weak, and both the prosecution and the foundations should probably address this. If the public wants reporting specifically on funds from HACC plea agreement verdicts, foundations and fundraising platforms, both state and private, should regularly publish such detailed information on exactly what the funds from these verdicts were spent on. This would help clarify which of the army’s needs are being met through donations and put an end to any doubts about how these funds are spent.

How the manager selections were announced

The first selection was announced in May. The bid submission period lasted more than a month, but only one company submitted a bid: HOTEY RESPECT LLC. 

The law does not allow the asset to be handed over to a single applicant without competition. If fewer than two participants are admitted to the auction, the selection does not take place, and ARMA must hold a “repeat second stage” within 10 working days, which in effect means announcing the selection anew. This is exactly what happened in July.

Terms of the new selection: what was required of participants

The new selection announcement generally complied with the Law and Resolution No. 167. It contained: 

• information about the asset; 
• an indicative management plan; 
• qualification requirements and a list of documents confirming compliance with them; 
• a model agreement; 
• remuneration terms; 
• the selection procedure, including requirements for submitting documents and for the auction. 

However, in future selections, the procedure for reimbursing the manager’s expenses and for paying its remuneration should be set out separately and exhaustively. Whether it makes economic sense for a participant to submit a bid depends on this.

In general, the ARMA Law sets a number of mandatory qualification requirements that are the same for all selections and all participants, and it allows ARMA’s commission for determining the manager to set additional ones. The basic qualification requirement under the ARMA Law is at least three years of experience in leasing out movable and immovable property or in acting as a leasing intermediary. This requirement is a formality and is insufficient to assess whether a participant can manage a large business. Any business entity that has officially leased out real estate and movable property as part of its business activities for three years will meet it. 

The other requirements under the Law are safeguards. 

• A participant may not: be linked to the asset owner, the persons involved in the criminal proceedings, or the aggressor state;
• be under sanctions; 
• have tax arrears exceeding 100 minimum wages; 
• be bankrupt, etc. 

The participant’s officers must not have been held liable for corruption or bid rigging or convicted of money laundering or crimes committed for gain. 

The law also specifically bars from participation those who produce or sell interchangeable goods, use similar raw materials or fixed assets, or depend in their pricing on the enterprise whose assets are being transferred to management. Recall that the manager of Morshynska selected in 2023 was itself a water producer. Under the current rules, such a participant would not have been admitted to the selection.

The list of documents participants had to submit was feasible and non-discriminatory. However, it should be refined for future selections. For example, participants were required to submit a “certificate of no criminal record” and a “certificate of no corruption offenses,” although state bodies issue different documents: extracts from the relevant registers. A document with such a title can only be drawn up by the participant itself, which does not guarantee its reliability. Nor did the announcement specify how recent the certificates had to be.

To offset the general nature of the basic qualification requirements, the Commission set an additional one: management experience in FMCG, the food industry, distribution, corporate rights, or large enterprises. However, such experience could be confirmed by almost any document, including a free-form certificate. This rules out discrimination but makes the requirement largely a formality.

The key information participants had to state in their bids was the desired management remuneration as a percentage of profit. It could be up to 100% of profit, with a minimum auction step of 10%. The winner was also required to provide a bank guarantee of over UAH 100 million and to pay a fee of UAH 5 million to the e-procurement platform.

Questions from potential participants

All inquiries and ARMA’s answers have been published on Prozorro. Businesses were primarily interested in how the asset would be managed going forward. 

First, the law does not provide for reimbursement of the manager’s expenses if the seizure is lifted or the asset is confiscated early. Second, some of the enterprises are located in occupied territory; the ARMA replied that it cannot exclude parts of the asset from the selection. Third, the plan projects the same revenue for 2026 as for a full year, even though the manager will be working for only about two months. The ARMA gave assurances that failing to meet the target in 2026 would not be treated as a breach, although this is not apparent from the model agreement.

At the same time, the clarifications the ARMA gave potential participants were not always consistent. This concerns the question of whether the manager must make the guarantee payment from its own funds even before receiving dividends. 

On July 30 and August 7, the Agency twice replied that the model agreement provides for a “mandatory monthly payment from the manager’s own funds regardless of whether income is received.” On August 18, however, it stated: “The Manager is not required to make the guarantee payment from its own funds in the interim months (including the entire period until June 1, 2027, based on the results of 2026),” because “payment is made for the reporting period, that is, a year, from the dividends received, not from the Manager’s own funds in advance.” These answers probably concern the interpretation of different terms and versions of the agreement, but it would be better if the Agency’s answers were consistent.

Participants were assessed not by ARMA itself but by the Commission for the Selection of Managers of Complex Assets, which has eight members: four appointed by the Agency and one each by the Business Ombudsman, the NSSMC, the Ministry of Economy, and the Ministry of Justice. Decisions were made by a majority of those present, but at least two of the votes in favor had to come from members appointed by external bodies.

Auction: from 80% to 0.01%

Five participants submitted bids in the competition to manage Morshynska, and all were admitted to the auction: Alliance D LLC, Asset Management Company Ready-Invest LLC, Legal Bureau Prioritas LLC, Meat Processing Plant Yuvileinyi LLC, and Asset Management Company Ukrcapital LLC. 

It is important to understand that this means the Commission had no objections to their qualifications. Before deciding on admission, the Commission checked their documents confirming compliance with the qualification requirements (management experience and leasing out property) and the absence of grounds for refusing participation. Initial bids ranged from 30% to 80% of profit; after the auction, they ranged from 0.01% to 10%.

Under the ARMA Law, a bid is considered abnormally low if it is 40% or more below the average bid of the other participants at the start of the auction, or 30% or more below the bid of the next participant in the final ranking. Given how far the bids fell in the Morshynska manager selection, the bids of all participants meet these criteria. Under the ARMA Law, a winner with an abnormally low bid had two working days to justify its price with calculations showing how it would cut costs, what favorable conditions it had, or how it would increase income compared to the indicative management plan. If no justification is provided, the Commission must reject the bid; if the justification is inadequate, the Commission may reject it.

The auction was won by Asset Management Company Ukrcapital LLC with remuneration of 0.01% of the profit from managing the asset, or roughly UAH 110,000 per year. The company submitted a justification for its abnormally low bid. It cited the absence of any need for separate infrastructure and the fact that it already has a license and staff, and it set out scenarios for a 10–15% increase in profit. The Commission found the justification inadequate. The mandatory contract-related expenses alone (the e-procurement platform fee, the bank guarantee, and insurance) amount to about UAH 10 million, dozens of times more than the manager’s remuneration. Moreover, some of the arguments concerned the winner’s qualifications rather than favorable conditions justifying such low remuneration. Nor were there any calculations of the effect of the tools for increasing income or of the methods for applying them. The Commission assessed the justification on the merits rather than formally and rejected the bid.

The winning bid

Next came the bid from Legal Bureau Prioritas LLC, offering remuneration of 0.9% of profit, or roughly UAH 10 million per year. This bid was also abnormally low, and the company likewise submitted a justification. The arithmetic is the same: the remuneration declared by the participant roughly equals the mandatory expenses it will have to incur. The key question therefore became whether the income from managing the asset would be enough to cover these expenses. 

In its justification, Legal Bureau Prioritas LLC pointed to several factors. Its existing staff would be sufficient. The bank guarantee costs would be one-off, and the bank had reduced them. Insurance was impossible because no suitable insurance product exists on the market. The winner also mentioned a new market niche for substitute products that had opened up after Coca-Cola’s production capacity was restricted, as well as its ties with a sports equipment manufacturer and plans to develop a line of sports drinks. In Prioritas’s view, its total remuneration (≈UAH 29.7 million) significantly exceeds the one-off costs and the optimized annual staff costs. The winner also presented a timetable within which it considers it possible to study the asset and draw up a plan for increasing income. 

The Commission was persuaded by the arguments of Legal Bureau Prioritas LLC regarding its abnormally low bid, and the company was declared the winner. According to the Commission, the same approach was applied to both participants when considering their justifications of an abnormally low price; in particular, their representatives were invited to Commission meetings to give explanations. Prioritas’s justification was found adequate in view of its methods for cutting costs, favorable conditions (the bank’s offer regarding the bank guarantee), and plans for increasing income (analysis of sales markets, export development, logistics optimization, and elimination of duplicate costs). 

Questions about the winner

After the auction results were announced, concerns were raised publicly about the documents Prioritas used to confirm its experience. Our analysis shows that this evidence of three years of business experience in leasing out property does indeed raise questions. 

Specifically, the documents show that the participant, Legal Bureau Prioritas LLC, leased property to Prioritas Law Association, which is headed by the same person as the LLC. This is not formally prohibited, but it gives food for thought. 

In future selections, it would be advisable to require as proof of experience not only contracts but also payment instructions and other documents that reliably establish that payments under the contracts were actually made. This is all the more relevant because ARMA already applied such requirements in last year’s selections to protect itself against unreliable information from participants.

In addition, the questionnaire submitted by Prioritas lacks some of the information about the participant’s authorized person. Furthermore, the information certificate from the Register of Corrupt Officials concerned the participant itself (the legal entity) rather than its official (officer). Under Resolution No. 167, ARMA therefore should have posted a request on Prozorro to remedy the discrepancies in this participant’s bid instead of admitting it to the auction.

The way the participant confirmed the additional requirement (management experience in FMCG, the food industry, corporate rights, or large enterprises) raises no fewer questions. Legal Bureau Prioritas LLC submitted two documents. The first was its own certificate stating that it has been the sole member of Terra Incognita Group LLC since 2015 and “has gained successful practical experience in managing business processes.” The second was a letter of recommendation from Terra Incognita Group itself. In other words, the recommendation for its sole owner came from a related company, and the letter was signed by a director whom this owner appoints. Moreover, neither document contains any figures or specific results, only general phrases about a “high level of professional competence” and “stability of management decisions.” 

YouControl’s open financial data may cast doubt on this picture of success. Terra Incognita Group’s revenue fell from UAH 17.7 million in 2023 to UAH 5 million in 2025, and its net profit from UAH 1.8 million to UAH 0.6 million. The revenue of the group the participant is to manage is about UAH 10 billion, roughly two thousand times more. Terra Incognita Group itself produces camping and outdoor gear. Its experience could be counted only because of the broad wording about “management of corporate rights.” As a result, the additional requirement, which was meant to offset the general nature of the basic one, was in practice satisfied with documents drawn up by the participant itself and a company it controls.

That said, within this particular selection, such issues should have been resolved at the stages of preparing the announcement and qualification, both of which are already over. If a participant has submitted false information that is material to determining the manager, Resolution No. 167 does not allow it to be corrected; such a participant must be found non-compliant. The Commission’s decision can be challenged in an administrative court, but this usually does not halt the selection. In this case, the Commission evidently had no evidence that the information submitted was false.

Moreover, according to information we received from the Commission itself, it should be borne in mind that the Commission is not entitled to rank participants by additional criteria by comparing their experience. It may only assess whether each participant meets the specific qualification requirements. Nor may the Commission set additional requirements after the bid submission deadline, since compliance with the qualification requirements must be assessed on an equal basis. 

In particular, since the selection announcement contained no requirements from the beginning regarding authorized capital, the financial results of enterprises managed by the participant, or the links between the participant and the enterprises it managed, none of these requirements can be introduced at the qualification stage, let alone after the auction.

In addition, the Commission considers it necessary for ARMA, before concluding the management agreement, to further verify the authenticity of the documents submitted to confirm experience and, if there are signs of a criminal offense, to refer the matter to law enforcement.

What comes next

After the winner was determined, the ARMA had five working days to conclude the agreement. However, on September 29, a day before this deadline expired, the Dnipropetrovsk District Administrative Court, acting on an application by Meat Processing Plant Yuvileinyi LLC, another auction participant, prohibited ARMA from concluding an agreement with Prioritas and signing acceptance and transfer certificates until the judgment in the case enters into force. This is probably why the agreement with the manager has still not been published on the selection page on Prozorro.

The plaintiff is challenging the admission of its competitors, the Commission’s decisions, and even the announcement itself. The court held that concluding the agreement is no longer part of the competition, so Article 151(6) of the Code of Administrative Procedure, which prohibits interference in public competitive procedures, does not apply here. 

This interpretation is debatable, since the Law regulates the conclusion of the agreement as part of the same procedure and even provides for replacing the winner. Moreover, the plaintiff, Meat Processing Plant Yuvileinyi, came last, in fifth place, in the auction. Even if Prioritas should not have been admitted, the next contender is Alliance D with 1%. The ruling does not explain how the ban protects the rights of this particular plaintiff, nor does it weigh the public interest in effective management of the seized asset. While the case is pending, the group effectively has no manager, and the selection, which has dragged on since May, is frozen once again. 

Even after the court dispute is resolved, the asset will not pass to the manager immediately. According to the ARMA, after the agreement is signed, the parties must jointly apply to the AMCU, and only then can the acceptance and transfer certificate be signed. The previous review concerning the IDS group took up to a year and a half. It is therefore currently impossible to predict when the asset will actually be transferred.

At the same time, the procedure has generally begun to work: competition has emerged, and the Commission examines justifications of abnormally low bids on the merits. Still, even based on this selection, which has yet to end successfully, we can offer the ARMA the following recommendations.

1. Correct document titles. Replace the “certificate of no criminal record” and the “certificate of no corruption offenses” with documents that state bodies actually issue (extracts from the relevant registers). Likewise, for anticompetitive concerted actions, require information from the relevant state register instead of a certificate. This will make it impossible to substitute self-drafted certificates for official documents. The announcement should explicitly allow non-resident participants to submit documents provided for by the legislation of their countries, with an appropriate translation.
2. Validity requirement for documents. Specify how recent documents must be, for example, issued no earlier than 30 days before the selection is announced.
3. Multi-level confirmation of additional experience requirements. Keep the option of alternative supporting documents, but require a free-form certificate together with other documents of the participant’s choice (projects, letters of recommendation, documents on participation in management, etc.). A certificate of a few sentences should not replace all evidence of experience.
4. Payment documents to confirm leasing experience. In addition to contracts, require payment instructions and bank notifications, as in ARMA’s previous selections. This will make it possible to establish that the business transactions actually took place.
5. Separate presentation of expenses and remuneration. Structure the announcement so that the procedures for reimbursing the manager’s expenses and paying its remuneration are each described separately and exhaustively, as the requirements for the content of the announcement demand.

It is worth noting that ARMA chose an extremely well-known and complex asset in advance to test the new rules for selecting managers in practice. As of October 21, 2026, Prozorro lists 19 competitive selections, of which only one has resulted in an agreement, eight did not take place, and eight are still accepting bids. 

It therefore depends on ARMA and the Commission how detailed and tailored the requirements will be for each complex asset, and how well the manager selections will be conducted. Clearly, the performance of these tasks still needs to improve.

How we prepared the report

In addition to TI Ukraine, experts from the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, Tomorrow’s Lawyer, Europe Without Barriers, the Ukrainian Bar Association, the Civil Network OPORA, and the Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law worked on the report, and European Pravda provided informational support. 

In preparing our section on combating corruption and organized crime, Transparency International Ukraine experts:

• conducted 17 interviews with various experts, representatives of international partners, civil society experts, and public officials;
• sent 12 requests to state bodies to clarify statistical information;
• analyzed 73 measures of the Rule of Law Roadmap in the area of fighting corruption and countering money laundering;
• examined legislation and its application in practice;
• analyzed international standards, including EU regulatory documents;
• reviewed official and statistical data and, based on these, identified trends in the activities of the state bodies covered by the report.

Chapter 23 on Justice and Fundamental Rights and Chapter 24 on Justice, Freedom, and Security, examined in the Shadow Report, are part of Cluster 1, Fundamentals. This cluster is key to the entire negotiation process: it was the first to open and will be the last to close, at the final stage of negotiations, once all EU member states give their consent.

This material is funded by Norway. Its content is the sole responsibility of Transparency International Ukraine and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Norwegian Government.

What is the current situation?

Reform of forensic examinations is a long-standing and unresolved problem in Ukraine’s justice system. The reasons include the following:

• Ukraine has no independent expert institution specializing in examinations in criminal proceedings under NABU jurisdiction. Similar specialized institutions do exist under other agencies, namely the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Border Guard Service, and the Security Service of Ukraine.
• There are no dedicated legal mechanisms for responding to pressure on experts.
• As a general rule, any expert institution has 90 days to conduct an examination, and this period can be extended.
• Not all expert institutions can prioritize examinations or have criteria for doing so.
• Examinations are assigned to experts by the head of the institution rather than by an automated system.
• By law, an expert’s minimum base salary is 10 subsistence minimums. However, this provision has been suspended by budget laws for 8 years, so actual pay may be lower.
• The Register of Forensic Examination Methodologies publishes only a list of methodologies, without their content.
• Private expert institutions have no right to conduct any criminalistic examinations.

What does the main draft law propose?

The main draft law would establish an independent expert center that would prioritize NABU and SAPO cases. It would also provide better financial, material, and technical conditions for other experts. 

To this end, the authors propose to:

• reorganize the Research Center for Independent Forensic Examinations (RCIFE) in line with the law’s requirements, so that it conducts forensic examinations in a specific category of cases, in particular corruption and corruption-related cases, based on the criteria of NABU jurisdiction;
• guarantee the RCIFE’s independence by establishing a Supervisory Board of 5 members (3 of them from international partners), which would hold a competitive selection of the center’s director. The authors also plan to introduce independent certification of experts and an independent procedure for bringing them to disciplinary liability, an audit of the center every 2 years, separate funding, and other safeguards;
• establish a procedure for responding to pressure on experts;
• set a shorter period of 60 days for the RCIFE to conduct an examination, with the possibility of extension;
• allow the RCIFE director to give priority to examinations for NABU and SAPO;
• ensure automated assignment of examinations among RCIFE experts;
• raise minimum base salaries to 40 subsistence minimums for RCIFE experts and to 30 for experts at other institutions, and prohibit budget laws from reducing them;
• publish in the Register of Forensic Examination Methodologies not only the list of methodologies but also their content, except for restricted information;
• allow private expert institutions to conduct certain criminalistic examinations at the RCIFE, with the list to be determined by the Ministry of Justice.

What are the advantages of the main draft law?

The main draft law offers a comprehensive solution to one of the most acute problems in complex NABU and SAPO corruption and corruption-related cases: the Bureau’s lack of access to independent forensic examination. The European Commission, the IMF, and other international partners, on whom Ukraine’s EU accession and financial support depend, have repeatedly drawn attention to this problem.

The Rule of Law Roadmap also stresses that NABU must have effective access to impartial, timely, and high-quality forensic examinations. Independent examinations for NABU will support high-quality investigations, which may in turn make it possible to recover criminal assets, including taxpayers’ money that officials sought to profit from. According to the Head of SAPO, it is precisely the lack of such examinations that directly affects how quickly and effectively corrupt officials are brought to criminal liability.

In complex corruption cases, expert opinions are often what makes it possible to establish the amount of damage, the origin of assets, and the substance of financial transactions, and to examine documents and digital evidence. Accordingly, the quality and speed of examinations directly affect both the prospects of proving the charges and the state’s ability to recover proceeds of crime.

The latest example, from the Themis and Forrest Gump cases, confirms this from the mouth of one of the persons involved himself: giving the NABU access to independent examination would cause him and his alleged accomplice a great many problems.

The main advantage of the draft law is that it creates an institutionally independent examination system for NABU and SAPO cases. The RCIFE will have separate funding, a special governance procedure, and its own guarantees of independence. Its director will be selected through a competition and may be dismissed only on grounds set out in law. This is a fundamental departure from the current model, under which the heads of state expert institutions are appointed and dismissed by the Ministry of Justice or another agency. At the same time, a Supervisory Board involving international experts will serve as an additional safeguard against political or administrative interference in the Center’s work.

The institution’s independence is complemented by personal guarantees for RCIFE experts themselves. Their certification and disciplinary liability will be handled by a separate Expert Qualification Commission and Disciplinary Chamber. This should reduce the scope for pressuring experts with the threat of dismissal, loss of qualification, or disciplinary proceedings. In the event of undue influence, an expert will also be required to report it to the director or the Supervisory Board.

These guarantees are reinforced by adequate pay for the center’s staff. The draft law proposes setting the minimum base salary of RCIFE experts at 40 subsistence minimums (UAH 133,120 in 2026) and that of experts at other state institutions at 30 subsistence minimums (UAH 99,840 in 2026). This should help attract and retain qualified specialists and, at the same time, reduce corruption risks associated with low pay. This is especially relevant given that experts currently earn UAH 25,000–30,000, while the statutory minimum salary of even 10 subsistence minimums has not been applied in practice since 2018, as it is suspended every year by the State Budget laws.

Another important change is ending the manual assignment of examinations to experts. At present, the specific expert in a state expert institution is usually chosen by its head. The draft law instead introduces automated assignment of examinations among RCIFE experts. This significantly narrows administrative discretion and makes it harder to hand a sensitive examination to the “right” expert in advance.

Faster examinations are just as important. Long waits for expert opinions are one of the factors that drag out complex NABU investigations. One example is the multi-episode proceedings related, among other things, to possible influence on examinations in the “Medvedchuk pipeline” case, in which investigators needed several different types of examinations at once. 

The problem of time limits is compounded by the risk of leaks. Fearing premature disclosure of investigation materials, the NABU is in some cases forced to delay handing them over to experts. 

A separate institution with stronger guarantees of independence, combined with a shorter standard examination period (60 days instead of 90) and the ability to prioritize the most urgent examinations, should reduce both risks.

Finally, the draft law may make expert opinions more predictable and easier to verify. Publishing the content of forensic examination methodologies, except for restricted information, will allow the parties and the court to check how an opinion was reached and whether the examination followed the established methodology. This should also help standardize expert practice and reduce cases in which similar examinations produce substantially different results without proper scientific justification.

The draft law’s merit, therefore, is not simply that it creates yet another state expert institution. It proposes to change the very model of forensic examination in high-level corruption cases: to protect the institution from external administrative influence, the expert from personal pressure, each examination from manual assignment, and the investigation from excessive delays.

A further advantage of the document is that it sets out in detail the transition from the existing Research Center for Forensic Examinations of the Ministry of Justice to the independent RCIFE. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine will have three months from the law’s entry into force to ensure a decision on reorganizing (transforming) the existing Center in line with the new requirements and to form the Supervisory Board in the manner set out in the law. It is at this stage that the key safeguard of independence, a supervisory body with international participation, is meant to begin operating. Within the same three months, when preparing the draft State Budget Law for 2027, the government is expected to provide a separate budget expenditure program for the RCIFE’s operation, which is a practical guarantee of the institution’s separate funding. The government must also ensure the adoption of secondary legislation and bring ministries’ regulations into line with the new Law. 

The Ministry of Justice will have five months to approve the RCIFE Charter in line with the Law’s requirements. Within another six months, the Ministry must take inventory of forensic examination methodologies, both those already entered in the Register of Methodologies and those applied outside it. This will make it possible to identify all restricted methodologies and the grounds for restricting them. It will also ensure that methodologies are published in the Register, except for restricted information, as open data available for free viewing. The draft law thus does not merely declare the principle that methodologies should be transparent; it sets a specific timeline and institutional mechanism for putting it into practice.

Why should the alternative draft laws be rejected?

The alternative draft laws by MPs Serhii Vlasenko and Volodymyr Kabachenko do not propose a separate forensic expert institution for the NABU or any other legislative measures that would give the Bureau real access to timely, independent, and high-quality forensic examinations. The two draft laws are virtually identical, apart from a few provisions. 

In fact, neither document proposes changes that would ensure high-quality examinations in high-level corruption cases, since none of the risks of influence on experts are eliminated. Nor do they fulfill Ukraine’s international commitments to give the NABU access to high-quality examinations.

Instead, the alternative documents propose to formally enshrine in the Law of Ukraine on the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine rights that NABU detectives already have under criminal procedure legislation: to order an examination on their own and to determine the questions put to the expert. In other words, this provision changes absolutely nothing.

In addition, a large block of amendments is devoted to deregulating forensic expert activity, in particular by abolishing the certification procedure. Both authors of the alternative draft laws propose allowing forensic examinations to be conducted by “individuals who have the special knowledge necessary to provide an opinion on the questions under examination and at least five years of professional experience in the relevant field of knowledge.” This means that any individual, in some fields even without higher education, would be able to provide expert opinions.

Such practice is indeed common in foreign jurisdictions. Alongside experts with special status, other specialists may be engaged ad hoc, and their opinions may be recognized as proper expert evidence. However, admitting such experts does not, as a rule, remove the need to verify their competence. Competence must be confirmed either in advance through an appropriate professional or registration procedure or directly when the expert is engaged in specific proceedings. Likewise, the absence of special certification does not rule out other mechanisms for ensuring an expert’s proper conduct and accountability. 

Several foreign legal systems also lack the clear distinction between the procedural status of an expert and that of a specialist that is characteristic of Ukrainian criminal procedure. This allows a wider range of persons to be engaged as experts, with their competence confirmed by knowledge and skills rather than special status.

However, the model proposed by MPs Vlasenko and Kabachenko does not reflect international best practices: it allows any individuals with sufficient experience and practice to conduct examinations. Moreover, the draft laws do not even specify who would be responsible for their quasi-certification, that is, for verifying their experience, practical skills, and knowledge.

Another important argument is made in a study on the qualifications of forensic experts. It states that a forensic expert’s specialized knowledge should not be equated solely with knowledge in the fields of science and technology on which the classes, kinds, types, and subtypes of examinations are based. In the author’s view, without knowledge of the general scientific foundations of forensic examination and its procedural framework, it is impossible to conduct an examination properly and document its results so that the expert opinion is admissible and reliable evidence.

The model in the Vlasenko and Kabachenko draft laws is underdeveloped. It proposes “delicensing” forensic expert activity without an adequate alternative for verifying an expert’s subjective and objective competence. As a result, it could open the door to abuse, undermine trust in forensic expert opinions, and overload court proceedings with checks on the reliability of such opinions.

Worse still, Kabachenko’s draft law No. 15569-2 also seeks to insert into the Law of Ukraine on Forensic Examination, bypassing the Criminal Procedure Code, provisions declaring inadmissible all evidence that the prosecution refused to provide to the defense for examination.

The alternative amendments also propose to deregulate the procedure and grounds for bringing forensic experts to disciplinary liability. Only experts in employment or service relationships would be punished for disciplinary offenses, while others would not be subject to such liability. 

In addition, Vlasenko and Kabachenko propose deleting entirely from the Law of Ukraine on Forensic Examination the articles on expert qualification commissions, which are also responsible for imposing disciplinary penalties on experts.

Ukraine does need deregulation of the forensic examination sector, but the approach must take into account and minimize all the associated risks. Deregulation on this scale, without a well-grounded alternative model, will only increase corruption risks, lower the quality of forensic expert opinions, and make them harder to use in court.

What should be improved in the main draft law

The main draft law proposes genuinely high-quality changes that can make a real difference to the effectiveness and results of NABU and SAPO investigations. However, to bring it as close to ideal as current conditions allow, two aspects should be improved.

1. Clarify the list of proceedings in which the RCIFE may conduct examinations

The main draft law proposes adding to Article 7-2(1) of the Law of Ukraine on Forensic Examination a provision establishing the RCIFE as an independent expert institution that would conduct forensic examinations in the following categories of cases:

• criminal proceedings concerning corruption offenses and corruption-related criminal offenses under Article 45 of the Criminal Code, as well as Articles 206-2, 209, and 211 of the Criminal Code, if at least one of the conditions set out in paragraphs 1–3 of Article 216(5) of the Criminal Procedure Code is met;
• cases on declaring assets unjustified and recovering them to the state (civil forfeiture).

As a result, the proposed wording of Article 7-2(1) of the Law on Forensic Examination would not, in practice, allow the NABU to have independent examinations conducted at the RCIFE in all cases under the Bureau’s jurisdiction. 

The reason is that, under certain conditions, NABU jurisdiction also covers cases under Articles 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, and 396 of the Criminal Code (Article 216(7) of the Criminal Procedure Code); cases under Articles 354 and 364–370 of the Criminal Code if committed by a Bureau employee (the fourth subparagraph of paragraph 3 of Article 216(5) of the Criminal Procedure Code); and cases under other articles of the Criminal Code if the NABU Director so decides with the consent of the Head of SAPO (the third subparagraph of paragraph 3 of Article 216(5) of the Criminal Procedure Code).

Therefore, to cover examinations in all NABU cases as fully as possible, the wording should be expanded so that the RCIFE conducts forensic examinations specifically in criminal proceedings investigated by NABU, including those under NABU jurisdiction, as well as in cases on declaring assets unjustified and recovering them to the state.

1. Specify certain technical provisions of the draft law

On reporting pressure: the law only obliges an expert to notify the RCIFE Director within two working days (or the Supervisory Board, if the pressure comes from the Director), but sets out no further procedure. There is no deadline for the Director or Supervisory Board to respond to the report, no list of possible response measures (removal from the case, reassignment to another expert, referral to law enforcement), and no obligation to inform the NABU and SAPO, as a party to the proceedings, of the interference with the expert’s work.

On the higher education of Supervisory Board members (Article 17-1(3)): the wording “higher education in law, forensic examination, audit, or financial control” also raises questions, since “forensic examination” is not a separate field of knowledge or specialty in Ukraine’s List of Fields of Knowledge and Specialties for higher education. It is therefore unclear which diploma would satisfy this requirement, which could leave room for arbitrary interpretation when the list of candidates is drawn up.

The draft law should therefore set a deadline for considering reports of pressure on experts, an indicative list of response measures, and an obligation to inform NABU and SAPO of the interference. The education requirement for Supervisory Board members should also be aligned with the List of Fields of Knowledge and Specialties. 

Conclusions

Transparency International Ukraine supports adopting the main Draft Law No. 15569 at first reading, with its provisions to be refined before second reading. The document has significant potential to resolve the long-standing problem of NABU and SAPO access to timely, independent, and high-quality forensic examinations.

However, to fully implement the proposed innovations, our recommendations should be taken into account:

• clearly extend the RCIFE’s mandate to all criminal proceedings investigated by the NABU;
• clarify certain technical points in the mechanism for responding to pressure on experts: a deadline for considering a report of pressure, an indicative list of response measures, and an obligation to inform the NABU and SAPO of the interference. The education requirement for Supervisory Board members should also be aligned with the List of Fields of Knowledge and Specialties.

Addressing these comments will preserve the draft law’s strengths and create a more coherent and predictable model of forensic expert activity.

Alternative draft laws No. 15569-1 and No. 15569-2 do not deserve support because they are ineffective and risk destabilizing the forensic examination sector, so they should be rejected.

How plea agreements are concluded in Ukraine

First, a reminder: a plea agreement is a compromise under criminal law. The state agrees to a more lenient punishment, and in return the accused admits guilt and assumes a number of obligations: to expose accomplices, compensate damages, and accept the agreed punishment. In other words, a plea agreement is about convicting a person and finding them guilty. 

The terms of the agreement are set by the parties: the prosecutor and the accused with defense counsel. The agreement is approved by the court (in high-level corruption cases, the HACC), which does so by delivering a guilty verdict. A person who has entered into a plea agreement is therefore convicted, not “released from liability.”

On receiving the indictment together with the agreement, the court examines whether the agreement’s terms comply with the law and the public interest and whether they violate the rights of others. The court cannot rewrite the agreement or redistribute the payments it provides for. It may only approve the document or refuse to approve it, giving reasons why it contradicts the law. 

Refusals to approve agreements concluded at the pre-trial investigation stage are rare. As of mid-September, the HACC reports only four cases in which an agreement was not approved and the case was returned for pre-trial investigation. In the “Kurchenko’s oil products” case, for instance, the court had previously refused to approve the agreement with Serhii Pashynskyi, finding that it provided for punishments not permitted by law, did not ensure full compensation of damages, and shifted its performance onto an undefined circle of third parties. 

From the start, plea agreements in corruption cases have drawn reservations. The main one is the risk that an agreement would become a way to “cut a deal” with the organizers of schemes who bear the greatest responsibility for the crimes committed. For this reason, the law restricted the categories of persons and the grounds for plea agreements. The new law on plea agreements, adopted in October 2024, broadened these grounds: an agreement can now be concluded if the person exposes another individual’s commission of any corruption or corruption-related crime, and also if the person compensates damages and exposes other persons involved.

At the same time, the law significantly sweetened the “carrot” for the accused. It introduced Article 69-2 of the Criminal Code, which allows a sentence below the minimum set by the sanction where the person exposes others. If the court imposes such a sentence, the person can no longer be released from serving it on probation. 

The maximum term of imprisonment at which a plea agreement may still provide for release on probation was raised from five to eight years. It also became possible to impose an additional fine even where the sanction of the relevant article does not provide for one. The procedure changed as well. Agreements must now be cleared by higher-level prosecutors, depending on the gravity of the offense. A plea agreement with the same person may be resubmitted to the court only once, and only after the grounds on which the court previously refused it have been eliminated. This is exactly what we saw with the second plea agreement concerning Serhii Pashynskyi.

But are these changes enough to ensure truly high-quality agreements, and how have they worked so far? 

On the one hand, for the first time there have been verdicts imposing sentences below the statutory minimum under Article 69-2 of the Criminal Code. In at least three such cases, the convicted persons are serving actual, albeit shorter, prison terms: former Chairman of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Kniaziev, former prosecutor of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine Volodymyr Derhunov, and former Ministry of Defense official Oleksii Stasiuk. The additional fine under Article 53(3) of the Criminal Code is being applied, though not consistently, as is special confiscation. 

The exposure mechanism is also producing results. According to the SAPO, 15 people have already been convicted on the basis of testimony from convicted persons who agreed to cooperate, and in most proceedings in which such testimony has been or will be given, trials are still ongoing.

As for special confiscation, the law still does not expressly require this instrument to be applied when plea agreements are concluded, although we recommended such an amendment. In our view, this is a gap that must be closed: where there are grounds for special confiscation, the court should approve an agreement only if it provides for it. This would guarantee that the state receives the property obtained through the crime.

This position is supported and expanded upon by the authors of an analysis of 2024–2025 case law prepared by the Centre of Policy and Legal Reform together with the NACP. They specifically note that asset freezes on land plots, vehicles, and funds were often lifted precisely because the agreement did not include a confiscation requirement. In other words, property the state had already frozen was returned to the convicted persons because of how the agreement was worded.

That said, the court’s refusal to approve the agreement with former MP Kachnyi in his illicit enrichment case is telling. The agreement provided for special confiscation of an apartment, a house, and land formally owned by the husband of the late nominal owner. Although the husband had acted under a power of attorney when the apartment was purchased, inherited the property free of charge, and expressly confirmed in court that he was only its nominal owner, the court refused approval. The reason given was that the third party’s awareness of the illegal origin of the funds had allegedly not been proven. In our opinion, these circumstances left no grounds for such doubts.

The main problems with current plea agreements

Despite all their benefits, plea agreements are not always well received by the public, because the state does not always explain such verdicts well. Below are what we see as the main reasons for this.

The first reason is classified verdicts.

The texts of some plea-agreement verdicts, including those concerning Pashynskyi, former Head of the Western Commercial Court of Appeal Plotnitskyi, and others, are fully classified. As a result, the public communications of the court and SAPO make it impossible to learn what exactly the state received in exchange for a lighter sentence. And since these cases very often involve well-known individuals, public outrage at such secrecy becomes a predictable reaction.

One of the earliest and still most notorious cases of a classified verdict is the agreement with former Minister of Ecology Mykola Zlochevskyi, who tried to have the criminal proceedings against him closed by offering a $5 million “super bribe” to the heads of the NABU and the SAPO. Under the plea agreement concluded in August 2023, the HACC fined Zlochevskyi UAH 68,000. In addition, under the terms of the agreement, he donated UAH 660 million to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That was all. And because the verdict was fully classified, the public never learned whether the “public interest” requirement had been met or whether the state had truly benefited from the deal.

In fact, this agreement became one of the main reasons the need to update legislation on such verdicts was raised at all. Since then, we at TI Ukraine have consistently stressed the need to publish the maximum permissible amount of information about each agreement, so that Ukrainians would not be left asking such questions.

Full classification often fails even in its immediate purpose of concealing cooperation with the investigation. If the law requires the convicted person to testify against accomplices, they will learn about the agreement anyway from the very fact that the proceedings have been separated. 

It is worth recalling that the HACC already knows how to redact individual parts of a verdict without classifying the entire text. For example, in the case of the head of the Agency for Local Roads of Poltava Region, the court kept the public-interest reasoning and other parts of the verdict public. The plea-agreement verdict in the Pashynskyi case was also initially classified, which we immediately flagged as a very bad precedent. The HACC responded promptly to our criticism and published a partially redacted verdict, which made the details of the agreement clear.

The second reason is the lack of clear rules for concluding agreements. 

In its response to our information request, the SAPO confirmed that it has no separate internal methodology for assessing whether an agreement can be concluded. At the same time, its Development Strategy for 2026–2028 provides for developing unified approaches, and the prosecutor’s office plans to involve judges, lawyers, and civil society organizations in this work. 

The HACC also informed us that it had not conducted any review of its case law on plea agreements. Nevertheless, a discussion is already under way on striking a balance between the effectiveness of criminal justice, the inevitability of liability, the fairness of punishment, and public trust in the anti-corruption system. The groundwork for developing clear policies on concluding agreements has also been laid.

The Pashynskyi agreement illustrates this process well. SAPO’s announcement listed the amounts of fines and compensation but did not explain why these terms were advantageous to the state. The necessary explanation appeared only once the verdict was published. It showed that, under the agreement, the prosecutor obtained testimony regarding other participants and that the overall number of defendants in the case had decreased, which offers a chance to try the case against the remaining defendants before the limitation period expires. 

However, this information came out almost a week after the news of the agreement, when the public had already spent several days discussing, and expressing outrage over, the “billion for freedom.”

The fact that the compensation paid to the budget (UAH 600 million) is smaller than the established damage (UAH 817 million) also turned out not to be accidental. The Pashynskyi case concerns a criminal organization rather than a single defendant, and the damage was caused by the actions of seven people, not one. The parties therefore agreed to partially release Pashynskyi from civil liability, taking into account the obligations of other persons convicted under plea agreements (UAH 111 million in compensation and UAH 40 million to the Armed Forces) as well as his own UAH 500 million for the army’s needs. Taken together, the compensation paid to the budget by all convicted persons in this case does not yet reach the established damage. Whether future verdicts against the remaining defendants will cover it is a question for SAPO.

The third reason is public expectations, and the public wants just punishment. 

Last year, a TI Ukraine sociological survey showed that 60% of Ukrainians consider the number of corrupt officials actually punished to be the most telling indicator of an effective fight against corruption, and that such punishment should involve imprisonment or confiscation. 

Agreements built on fines and charitable contributions do not meet this expectation. That is why SAPO must explain them with particular care, and the rules under which prosecutors agree to conclude plea agreements must be clear before the next high-profile case emerges.

Is the money clean?

In nearly half of the plea-agreement verdicts we analyzed, concluded between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, the accused undertook to make a charitable contribution to the needs of the Armed Forces. This practice emerged after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that is, even before the updated law on plea agreements in high-level corruption cases was adopted. Today, however, it can be considered almost mandatory for this type of verdict.

Charitable contributions range from UAH 10,000 to UAH 20 million. According to the HACC, more than UAH 321 million was directed to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2025 alone. According to SAPO’s latest data, plea agreements in high-level corruption cases have already channeled more than UAH 1.6 billion to the needs of the Defense Forces. Of this, more than UAH 1.1 billion came through the state fundraising platform United24, more than UAH 272 million through the Come Back Alive foundation, and more than UAH 50 million through the Sternenko Community foundation.

The Serhii Pashynskyi agreement set one of the records for the amounts involved: UAH 600 million in compensation to the state budget, paid in installments over 2.5 years; UAH 400 million, or weapons worth that amount, to the Come Back Alive foundation within six months of the verdict’s announcement; UAH 100 million to the Sternenko Community foundation for weapons within 30 days; and a UAH 850,000 fine as the principal punishment, plus a UAH 17,000 fine and a one-year ban on holding public office as additional punishments.

Three questions arise around this money, and in fact they apply to all the amounts set out in other plea-agreement verdicts.

Has inflation “eaten” the compensation? 

One of the most common arguments made by critics of the Pashynskyi agreement is that damage caused in 2014 is being compensated today at a nominal amount that has lost much of its value over twelve years. In other words, UAH 600 million in 2026 is nowhere near the money Ukraine lost in 2014 through the machinations of the former acting head of the Presidential Administration. 

The argument has merit, but it is aimed not at plea agreements as an institution but at how the state protects its property interests in criminal proceedings generally.

On the whole, the law does not leave the state defenseless against inflation. Under Article 625(2) of the Civil Code, a debtor who has defaulted on a monetary obligation must, at the creditor’s request, pay the debt adjusted for inflation plus 3% per annum. Back in 2018, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court held that this rule applies to all types of monetary obligations regardless of how they arose, which means it should also extend to damage caused in criminal cases. In addition, Article 1192 of the Civil Code provides that losses from the loss of property are calculated according to its actual value at the time the case is heard. 

In a case concerning misappropriated oil products, such as Pashynskyi’s, this may be of practical importance, since it involves property whose price changed with the market rather than a fixed sum of money. However, recovering this difference would most likely have required a separate expert examination, which would also have taken time and might not have produced any result.

Claims for inflation losses can also be brought in criminal proceedings by filing a civil claim, and case law contains such examples. In a misappropriation case (Article 191(4) of the Criminal Code), the Kamianets-Podilskyi City District Court recovered inflation losses and 3% per annum from the accused. However, because the limitation period for civil claims was applied at the defendant’s request, interest could be recovered only for the last three years. As a result, instead of the more than UAH 419,000 in inflation losses claimed, the state was to receive approximately UAH 30,000. 

There is also such a case at the HACC. In the case of Oleh Halushko, head of an Armed Forces department, the Ministry of Defense sought to recover almost UAH 8 million in inflation losses on top of UAH 21.5 million in principal damage. However, the court delivered an acquittal and left the claim without consideration. The review of this verdict is still ongoing: in June 2026, the Supreme Court quashed the HACC Appeals Chamber’s ruling upholding the acquittal, so the issue of compensation adjusted for inflation losses may also be reconsidered.

To recover inflation losses, the obligation must be monetary, that is, clearly defined as a specific amount. In criminal cases, this is mostly possible only where funds have been embezzled or misappropriated, not with other types of damage. The Pashynskyi case did not involve the seizure of a specific sum of money; the subject matter was oil products.

Thus, the problem is not that the law prohibits taking inflation into account, but that no mechanism does so automatically. The court cannot index the amount of damage on its own initiative or go beyond the claims submitted. And if the injured state authority, or a prosecutor acting in the interests of the state, has not claimed compensation for inflation losses, those losses will be recovered neither under a guilty verdict in ordinary proceedings nor in proceedings based on a plea agreement. 

In the Pashynskyi case, no civil claim was filed at all. Therefore, a claim for inflation losses could neither be granted by the verdict nor taken into account in the agreement, and the amount of damage was fixed at its nominal 2014 value of UAH 600 million. Moreover, even when such a claim is filed, it is exposed to the limitation period for civil claims, which in cases involving events from a decade ago may reduce it to symbolic amounts.

Hence our recommendation. The issue of inflation losses should be addressed primarily to the prosecution (in this case, SAPO) and to the bodies representing the state as the injured party. A claim for their recovery should become a standard part of civil claims in cases involving the theft of state property, and taking it into account should become one of the criteria by which a prosecutor assesses the amount of compensation in an agreement. 

Separately, it is worth discussing whether the requirement of “full compensation for damages” as a precondition for an agreement covers only the nominal amount of damage or also its real value at the time the agreement is concluded. The law currently gives no direct answer to this question.

Moreover, some of the public’s complaints about the “leniency” of the punishment concern issues that a plea agreement does not resolve. The court did not order confiscation of property in the Pashynskyi case. The SAPO explained that the corresponding additional punishment under Article 255 of the Criminal Code was introduced in June 2020, that is, after the events in the case. The principle prohibiting the retroactive application of a law that worsens a person’s position therefore applies.

2. Why does the money go to foundations rather than to the budget? 

Former Head of the HACC Vira Mykhailenko once explained that it is the prosecution and the defense that agree on where charitable payments should go and in what amount, while the court merely checks whether the agreement complies with the law. Therefore, the question “why these particular foundations?” should be addressed to the parties to the agreement, not to the court. 

But the question should be asked honestly. Are there well-founded concerns about the transparency of the foundations named in the agreement? And if there are none, what difference does it make to the state whether money goes to the budget or to a foundation that procures weapons for the army professionally and accountably? 

In wartime, a large share of the budget goes to defense anyway. A foundation, whether Come Back Alive, Sternenko Community, or any other, may be a faster and more targeted channel in this chain. Moreover, Come Back Alive explicitly states that it does not take a percentage of donations for administrative expenses.

The real risks lie elsewhere. The first is ensuring that the foundation is not connected to the accused or their associates. The second is ensuring that compliance with the condition can be verified. 

Failure to comply with a plea agreement carries separate criminal liability, and the SAPO may ask the HACC to set aside the verdict and hear the case under the general procedure. Notably, in all the time the court has been operating, prosecutors have never filed such a motion. 

According to SAPO, no cases of deliberate non-compliance with agreements have been identified so far, and no convicted person has been held liable for violating the terms of an agreement. Compliance is confirmed by payment documents that are submitted to the court and the prosecutor and added to the case file. In other words, verification of the transfers does exist, but it is carried out solely by SAPO. Beyond that, one can rely on the public reporting of the relevant charitable foundations, which should be open to the general public. If there is demand for reporting specifically on HACC plea-agreement verdicts, it would make sense for the foundations concerned to publish specific information on exactly what the funds from such verdicts were spent on. This would help show which specific needs of the army these donations are meeting.

At the same time, the public reaction to the fact that Pashynskyi must donate to Come Back Alive and Sternenko Community under the agreement has also produced unexpected results. On September 28, the HACC refused to approve a plea agreement with MP Oleksandr Kachnyi in his case concerning illicit enrichment of more than UAH 12.7 million. Kachnyi had admitted guilt and agreed to transfer UAH 3 million to a Come Back Alive project. In her refusal, however, the judge stated that the use of these funds would be beyond the control of the parties and the court, and that the court therefore could not be satisfied that these provisions served the public interest.

3. Whose money is it? 

This is the third and perhaps the most important risk. A formally positive outcome, such as paid compensation or a donation to the army, may be financed with opaque money. The origin of the funds used to fulfill the terms of an agreement should be checked no less thoroughly than, for example, the origin of money posted as bail. 

The SAPO confirmed that, in practice, damages are compensated and charitable contributions are paid not only by the convicted persons themselves but also by third parties; the law does not prohibit this. At the same time, the Criminal Procedure Code does not provide for any separate procedure under which a prosecutor would verify the origin of such funds. The SAPO relies on banks, which, as primary financial monitoring entities, are required to check transactions under anti-money laundering legislation.

However, to be consistent, we must acknowledge something uncomfortable for the critics and recall the special confiscation mechanism. It involves seizing precisely those funds and property whose criminal origin has been expressly established by a court verdict. When it is applied, the state knowingly fills the budget with money obtained through crime. 

From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it is therefore hard to explain why the same logic becomes unacceptable when the funds come not through special confiscation but as compensation for damages or in fulfillment of a charitable condition of an agreement. In the end, the money ends up in the budget or with the army either way, and either way it does not stay with the convicted person. The outrage that “the money did not go to the budget” thus concerns form, not substance. 

Why plea agreements are good after all, and why they need improvement

The main argument in favor of the Pashynskyi agreement lies not in its amount but in the alternative. The events in the case took place in the spring of 2014, yet notices of suspicion were served only in February 2024. The limitation period for abuse of office in this case expires as early as 2028, so the parties explicitly linked the agreement to the fact that it makes it possible to try the case against the other defendants within that period. 

A full trial with several defendants, a large body of evidence, and the defense’s procedural tactics could have lasted for years. Had the limitation period expired in the meantime, the person would have been released from liability altogether, and the state would have received nothing: no verdict and no compensation, not even partial. Despite the European Commission’s requirements, Ukraine’s rules on limitation periods have still not been reformed. In cases investigated decades after the events, a plea agreement is therefore often an alternative not to a harsh sentence but to impunity.

A criminal trial always has a probabilistic outcome. The prosecution considers guilt proven, the defense does not, and the court has the final word. A plea agreement turns probability into certainty: a guilty verdict, the status of a convicted person, real money, and testimony against other participants. A fine is a type of principal punishment under the Criminal Code. It is therefore incorrect to speak of “buying one’s way out” of punishment when the payment is itself a punishment. 

By comparison, another defendant in the Pashynskyi case, Serhii Tyshchenko, received eight years’ imprisonment under a plea agreement and was released from serving the sentence on probation. He transferred UAH 40 million to the Defense Forces and must pay another UAH 110 million to the budget within three years. The “Kurchenko’s oil products” case is not over: there were other suspects, and not all of them entered into plea agreements.

Precisely because plea agreements have become the main way high-level corruption cases are resolved, work on their quality must continue. The HACC should consolidate its approaches to assessing the public interest and make partial redaction of verdicts, rather than full classification, the standard practice wherever full classification is not directly required to protect a person or other proceedings. The SAPO should implement the measures in its Strategy on unified approaches to plea agreements and, in every high-profile case, publicly explain what the state stands to gain. 

Parliament needs to make special confiscation a mandatory condition for approving an agreement where there are legal grounds for it. Wider use of real, albeit shorter, prison terms and additional fines would also improve public perception of such verdicts. 

Finally, the two problems that most fuel outrage over plea agreements lie outside them altogether. These are the unreformed limitation periods, which force prosecutors to negotiate, and the fact that the state does not always use the available mechanisms for recovering inflation losses, so that nominal compensation loses value, whether under a plea agreement or an ordinary verdict. After all, hundreds of millions in damage caused in 2014 are not the same as hundreds of millions in 2026.

Both legislators and practitioners need to address these problems. Until they do, a fair deal remains a better outcome than a case that ends in nothing.

How do things stand now?

At present, the formation of the HQCJ does not involve three international experts, because the term of office of the first composition of the Selection Commission was two years and expired in June 2025. 

In addition, the Selection Commission itself reviews candidates’ documents and compiles the list of persons admitted to the interview. A decision of the Selection Commission is adopted if four members vote for it, including at least two international members.

In the formation of the HCJ, international members participate in the first composition of the Ethics Council only for a six-year term, which ends in November 2027. The Ethics Council determines whether candidates meet the criteria of professional ethics and integrity, while the body that nominated the candidate checks compliance with the criterion of professional competence. The HCJ Secretariat has the power to accept documents from, and admit to the competition, candidates for the High Council of Justice who are elected by congresses or a conference. 

What does the main draft law propose?

The main draft law proposes two major sets of changes: one concerning the selection of HQCJ members and one concerning the selection of HCJ members.

For the selection of HQCJ members, it proposes the following changes.

• A competition may be held simultaneously for all vacant HQCJ positions if there is more than one vacancy. The HCJ must announce it no later than three months before the end of the term of office of the relevant HQCJ member, or within ten days after the early termination of that member’s powers or the member’s dismissal.
• The competition is conducted by the second composition of the Selection Commission, which includes three members nominated by international and foreign organizations. At least one of these three members must be a Ukrainian citizen. The Commission’s term of office is two years, after which it will be formed under the general rules of Article 95-1 of the Law of Ukraine on the Judiciary and the Status of Judges.
• The High Council of Justice, rather than the Selection Commission, will review the documents submitted by candidates for HQCJ membership and decide whether to admit them to the competition.
• The competition will consist of three separate stages, each handled by a different body. First, the HCJ will check whether the candidate and the candidate’s documents meet the statutory requirements. Next, the HCJ Secretariat will organize special vetting. Finally, the Selection Commission will determine whether the candidate meets the integrity criterion and, separately, the professional competence criterion.

• Only if there are reasonable doubts about a candidate’s integrity will the Selection Commission be able either to hold an interview or to request written explanations from the candidate for HQCJ membership. To assess compliance with the professional competence criterion, the Selection Commission will hold only an interview.
• The Selection Commission will make decisions by a simple majority, without a mandatory quota of two votes from international experts, and a tie vote will remain unresolved.
• The HCJ must receive at least two recommended candidates per vacancy. For positions to be filled by judges or retired judges, at least two candidates for the relevant vacancy must also belong to this category.

For the selection of HCJ members, it proposes the following changes. 

• The draft law sets a uniform starting point of the competitive procedure for the various bodies that elect HCJ members: no later than six months before the end of an HCJ member’s term of office, or within 14 days after the early termination of that member’s powers. It will also be possible to hold a single competition for several vacancies at once.
• The acceptance of documents and the initial screening of candidates will pass from the HCJ to the body that convenes the relevant congress or conference. That body will also interview the candidates who have passed special vetting and been recommended by the Ethics Council, in order to assess their professional competence.
• The Ethics Council will continue to assess professional ethics and integrity, and it will pass on to the electing body not only its opinions and the list of recommended persons, but also the documents and information concerning them.
• For the Verkhovna Rada, the draft law extends the deadline for submitting documents from 25 to 30 days and explicitly allows minor errors and inaccuracies to be corrected. 
• Instead of holding a “preliminary discussion,” the parliamentary committee will conduct full-fledged interviews with candidates to assess their professional competence, and the Verkhovna Rada will receive a broader package of materials on each candidate.

The government’s alternative Draft Law No. 16018-1, rejected by the Committee on Legal Policy, is virtually identical to the main one, except that the government proposed partially preserving the decisive vote of international members when assessing the integrity of HQCJ candidates: such a decision would have required four votes, at least two of them from international members. For professional competence, however, a simple majority would have sufficed.

In addition, the government’s draft did require the Selection Commission for HQCJ members to hold an integrity interview with every candidate, with no option to rely on written explanations instead and no precondition of reasonable doubts.

What should be improved?

Although the main draft law contains a number of useful procedural changes, it creates significant risks for the effectiveness of the competitions and for the role of the international component.

The draft law’s greatest flaw is that it waters down the role of international experts in the competitive selection of HQCJ and HCJ members. Taken individually, each change may not raise serious concerns. Taken together, however, they produce a vulnerable competitive procedure in which the international component loses its key advantage: independence and objectivity. Moreover, the draft law contains procedural changes that could significantly reduce the effectiveness of the selection. 

To eliminate all these risks, we offer the following recommendations for improving this legislative act. The Venice Commission has also endorsed some of these concerns about the changes to the HQCJ and HCJ selection procedures.

 

1. The full participation of international members in the Selection Commission for HQCJ members and in the Ethics Council for selecting HCJ members should last longer

Under the logic of the draft law, this competition for HQCJ members will be the last one conducted with international experts. Afterwards, once the two-year term of the second composition of the Selection Commission ends, it will consist of persons delegated by the judicial, prosecutorial, legal, and academic communities in accordance with Article 95-1 of the Law on the Judiciary.

Something similar, or even worse, will happen to the HCJ competition. The first composition of the Ethics Council for forming the HCJ, with the participation of foreign experts, was established on November 9, 2021, and its members serve a six-year term. As a result, a year from now, in 2027, the first composition of the Ethics Council will lose its powers, and its next composition will be formed from the judicial, prosecutorial, legal, and academic communities.

Regrettably, the draft law does not propose extending the participation of international experts in forming the HCJ and the HQCJ any further, even though such selection models have proven genuinely effective for top positions in Ukraine.

The proposal that at least one of the three international experts be Ukrainian is also concerning. Currently, nothing prevents or prohibits international partners from recommending Ukrainian citizens to commissions in such competitions. The inclusion of a Ukrainian citizen is therefore not problematic in itself, but it becomes a sensitive issue if the international component loses its decisive vote at every stage of the assessment.

Just as importantly, the draft law removes the Selection Commission’s specific power to engage assistants at the request of its members. Such assistance is needed to verify information about candidates and to organize the Commission’s work.

In its urgent opinion, the Venice Commission also supported a second composition of the Selection Commission with the participation of international experts. It reiterated that the involvement of international experts, as an exceptional temporary measure, should continue until the intended result is achieved. The opinion also criticized the mandatory quota for a Ukrainian citizen and the lack of an option to engage assistants.

Therefore, the participation of international experts should be extended for another six years, at least for the second composition of the Ethics Council. Likewise, the participation of members nominated by international and foreign organizations should be extended not only to the second but also to at least the third composition of the Selection Commission for HQCJ members, without introducing a quota for Ukrainian citizens and while preserving the Commission’s ability to engage assistants.

2. The votes of international experts in the selection of HQCJ members should remain decisive

The draft law proposes to neutralize the special role of international experts on the Selection Commission for HQCJ members. 

Currently, to decide that a candidate meets the criteria of integrity and professional competence, the Selection Commission must vote with four votes, at least two of which come from international experts.

The main draft law proposes to abolish this advantage of international experts’ votes entirely, so that the Selection Commission for HQCJ members would decide by a simple majority.

The Cabinet of Ministers’ proposals in the alternative draft law also weakened the role of international members’ votes by setting separate voting rules for the integrity criterion and the professional competence criterion:

• to find that a candidate meets the integrity criterion, four votes would be required, at least two of them from international members;
• to find that a candidate meets the professional competence criterion, four votes would be required, at least one of them from international members.

Moreover, both draft laws remove the special mechanism for breaking a tie. As a result, a 3–3 vote could block a decision, whereas under the current model for the first composition of the Selection Commission, the decision supported by at least two international members prevails in such a case.

Like us, the Venice Commission recommends not changing the weight of the votes and retaining the decisive vote of international experts in assessing both criteria: integrity and professional competence.

Weakening the decisive vote of international members will only increase the risk of interference with the selection results. Therefore, the current voting procedure of the Selection Commission for HQCJ members, with the decisive vote of international experts, should remain unchanged.

3. Integrity interviews for HQCJ candidates should be mandatory

Main Draft Law No. 16018, supported by the parliamentary committee, proposes a dangerous provision that would allow candidates for HQCJ membership who lack integrity to pass the integrity filter without proper verification and assessment.

The draft law provides that an integrity interview will be held only if there are reasonable doubts about the candidate’s integrity, and that even where such reasonable doubts exist, the Commission may limit itself to sending requests asking the candidate to explain the suspicious circumstances.

This approach to vetting candidates’ integrity is extremely risky, as it will become much harder to screen all candidates properly. Consequently, the risk that members lacking integrity will join the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine will grow.

In a similar selection of judges for the High Anti-Corruption Court, the Public Council of International Experts, despite having the same option to hold interviews selectively, decided to invite all candidates to interviews. As a result, 68% of the participants failed to convince the experts of their integrity.

Moreover, the alternative government draft law contains this very proposal to hold integrity interviews with all HQCJ candidates under any circumstances. We hope that, when revising the main draft law for the second reading, the committee will incorporate this positive proposal from the alternative draft.

Therefore, the Selection Commission for HQCJ members should be required to hold integrity interviews with every candidate, without exception.

4. A standardized assessment of professional knowledge should precede the integrity check

The proposal to assess candidates in an order where integrity is checked first and professionalism only afterwards remains unexplained.

The Selection Commission spends far more time, effort, and resources on checking a candidate’s integrity, since this requires reviewing a vast amount of public and non-public data, analyzing it, and assessing every suspicious fact.

To save resources, the first stage should consist of standardized testing of professional knowledge and analytical skills and/or a practical assignment. This would make it possible to determine the pool of candidates who will undergo the resource-intensive integrity check. Other components of professional competence that the standardized assignment does not cover should be assessed during a structured interview.

The Venice Commission takes the same approach: if the interview is retained as the sole tool for assessing professional competence, it must be conducted consistently, on the basis of criteria and a structure published in advance, while a written or practical component would increase objectivity.

Therefore, the first stage should provide for a standardized assessment of professional knowledge and analytical skills through testing and/or a practical assignment, and the other components of professional competence should be assessed during a structured interview. The integrity check should be conducted for candidates who have passed the first stage.

5. Assessing the professional competence of HCJ candidates requires consistent rules

Today, in the competitive selection of HCJ members, compliance with the criteria of ethics and integrity is determined by the Ethics Council, which includes international experts. Professional competence, in turn, is formally checked by the body that nominated the candidate.

The draft law proposes to explicitly grant the body that convenes the relevant congress or conference the power to hold a full-fledged interview with candidates to assess their professional competence. The relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada receives a similar function with respect to candidates from Parliament.

However, the text of the draft law does not set out common criteria, indicators, or a methodology for this assessment. As a result, each of the bodies that form the HCJ may apply the same statutory requirement of professional competence differently. Furthermore, unlike the HQCJ competition, where the decision on professional competence is expressly required to be reasoned, the draft law does not explicitly establish a similar requirement for the bodies that assess HCJ candidates.

The Venice Commission expressly recommends that Parliament not transfer the assessment of professional competence to these bodies. However, if the interviews are nonetheless retained, the law should clearly state that they are not eliminatory.

Therefore, consistent rules for assessing candidates’ professional competence should be established for congresses, conferences, and parliamentary committees: common criteria, indicators, and a requirement to give reasons for decisions.

6. The procedure for admitting HCJ candidates needs to be unified

The draft law proposes to change the body that admits candidates to the competition for HCJ membership. Currently, the High Council of Justice itself is responsible for accepting the documents of such candidates and admitting them, whereas the draft law proposes to transfer these powers to the bodies that convene congresses or conferences and to the parliamentary committee.

This means that different bodies will decide on admission to the same competition, which creates a risk of inconsistent practice and of different approaches to assessing whether candidates’ documents meet statutory requirements.

The draft law also sets different methods of submitting documents depending on the body to which the candidate intends to submit them. For example, a person wishing to take part in the selection who submits documents to the body that convenes the relevant congress or conference may do so in person, by mail, or by electronic means of communication. If, however, the documents are submitted to the relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada, the candidate may do so only in person or by mail.

The draft law itself does not explain why candidates for the same position should have different options for submitting documents, and different chances of being admitted, depending on the electing body. Unless there are objective technical or security obstacles, electronic submission should also be available in the parliamentary procedure, and the admission criteria should be uniform for all bodies.

While generally supporting the digitalization of document submission, the Venice Commission adds requirements that refusals of admission be reasoned, communicated to the candidate, and subject to appeal.

Therefore, HCJ candidates should be able to submit documents to the parliamentary committee electronically, and the admission criteria should be uniform for all bodies. 

Conclusion and recommendations

In its current form, Draft Law No. 16018 could do more harm than good. 

Therefore, Transparency International Ukraine supports its adoption at first reading as a basis, with mandatory revision before the second reading in accordance with Article 116 of the Law of Ukraine on the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, only on the condition that the revision is based on our recommendations:

• extend the participation of members nominated by international and foreign organizations not only to the second but also to at least the third composition of the Selection Commission for HQCJ members, refrain from introducing a quota for Ukrainian citizens in it, and preserve its ability to engage assistants;
• leave unchanged the current voting procedure of the Selection Commission for HQCJ members, with the decisive vote of international experts;
• provide for a first stage consisting of a standardized assessment of professional knowledge and analytical skills through testing and/or a practical assignment; assess the other components of professional competence during a structured interview, and conduct the integrity check only for candidates who have passed the first stage;
• require the Selection Commission for HQCJ members to hold integrity interviews with every candidate;
• extend the participation of international experts to at least the second composition of the Ethics Council;
• establish uniform rules for assessing the professional competence of HCJ candidates for congresses, conferences, and parliamentary committees: common criteria, indicators, and a requirement to give reasons for decisions;
• allow HCJ candidates to submit documents to the parliamentary committee electronically, and make the admission criteria uniform for all bodies. 

Identified problems and recommendations for improving the draft law

Despite its generally positive direction, an analysis of the text of draft law No. 15165 reveals certain risks:

1. Inconsistency of the procedure for establishing self-organization bodies with the Constitution of Ukraine. Establishing these bodies falls within the competence of the local council, and the law cannot restrict the council or deprive it of the ability to decide, at its own will, whether or not to permit the establishment of a self-organization body. Under the draft, however, the council would effectively be required to accept the residents’ initiative.
2. Inconsistency with the Basic Law of the amended legal formulation “powers granted to a self-organization body in accordance with the Constitution and laws of Ukraine, as well as transferred to it by the village, settlement, or city council within its competence to address issues of local importance in the relevant territory.” The Constitution does not provide for granting or transferring the powers of local councils to self-organization bodies; it only provides for councils to endow them with powers by the councils’ own decisions.
3. Diminished role of the local council in determining the scope of a self-organization body’s powers. This is not fully consistent with the constitutional nature of these bodies as entities endowed with part of the competence of local self-government bodies and requires further justification. 
4. Delimitation of self-organization bodies’ powers and the local council’s discretion. Combining the own and delegated powers of self-organization bodies under the single term “powers of a self-organization body” runs counter to the principle that it is the council that must determine the scope of these bodies’ powers — the very powers for which they are essentially established (and which depend on the relevant council’s willingness to endow the body with part of its own competence, finances, and property).
5. Delineation of powers. There is a risk that the functions of self-organization bodies will duplicate the powers of village heads, which may lead to conflicts of competence within a single territorial community. The draft should therefore clearly delineate where the responsibility of a self-organization body ends and that of the village head begins, so as not to create “dual power” on the same street.
6. Risk of formalism. Stronger accountability and publicity requirements call for additional digital tools; otherwise, self-organization bodies in villages or settlements will be technically unable to comply with these rules.
7. Vague financial guarantees and integrity requirements. The draft obliges councils to assist self-organization bodies but sets no clear minimum standards for financial support. Transparency requirements for spending the funds these bodies will receive from local budgets should be strengthened by introducing mandatory public reporting.

Meeting at the Government of Liechtenstein

The participants met with Sabine Monauni, Deputy Prime Minister of Liechtenstein. She stressed that transparency, integrity, and effective corruption prevention are essential to Ukraine’s sustainable recovery, and that supporting Ukraine remains a priority for Liechtenstein.

Photo:IKR/Roland Korner 

“Preventing and combating corruption are key prerequisites for sustainable recovery. Corruption slows economic growth, hinders the realization of human rights, and undermines trust in state institutions. That is why we are investing in training young professionals who will go on to contribute to preventing and combating corruption in Ukraine,” said Sabine Monauni.

The meeting also covered the anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.

Lessons from the banking sector

The second day of the visit was devoted to the banking sector, which accounts for 19.6% of Liechtenstein’s economy. Representatives of the Liechtenstein Bankers Association and experts from three of the country’s leading banks spoke about compliance systems, anti-money laundering, fraud prevention, and corruption risks. Together with the interns, they discussed the role banks play in detecting and investigating corruption offenses and how this experience could be applied in Ukraine.

Inside the Basel Institute on Governance

In Switzerland, the interns spent a day at the Basel Institute on Governance, getting to know the Institute’s team, its projects, and its approach to work. Discussions covered countering corruption in the private sector and in the environmental field, how research can influence behavior change, and the complexities of international advocacy and asset recovery. The group also talked about how anti-corruption organizations work internally, from communications challenges to the specifics of project management.

“Reconstruction and EU accession will require not only reforms but also professionals capable of implementing them. That is why our internship program helps young professionals enter the anti-corruption field with practical knowledge and skills they can apply in their work.

The study trip to Liechtenstein and Switzerland gave the interns a chance to see Ukraine through the eyes of international partners, gain a better understanding of how complex our challenges are, and see just how varied the tools of anti-corruption work can be. They learned how the state, business, and the expert community work together to counter corruption, and they will now be able to draw on this experience in their work in Ukraine,” Anastasiia Mazurok, Deputy Executive Director at Transparency International Ukraine, said, summing up the visit.