What the bill proposes

The special rules will apply to village, settlement, and city councils in communities with fewer than 10,000 voters whose members were elected in the 2020 local elections under the plurality system in multi-member constituencies, and whose membership has fallen below the level required for a council to function normally.

The key change is that a council will retain its authority if, after the early termination of some members’ powers, between one-third and one-half of its members, inclusive, remain in office. If one-third of the total membership is not a whole number, the required number of members will be rounded up to the next whole number.

The draft law also sets out specific rules for convening sessions and making decisions in such councils. The special regime will remain in effect for the duration of martial law and, after martial law is terminated or lifted, until the first session of the council elected at the next local elections.

Another set of changes concerns council members serving in the military. The revised text provides that requirements for participating in council work, and the consequences of missing meetings, will not apply to members of village, settlement, and city councils who are performing military service during mobilization, under contract, or following the call-up of reservists. Military service in itself will not terminate a member’s powers.

The draft law also allows the procedures for council members’ reporting to be adapted to security conditions. In particular, a council will be able to determine how members report and how their reports are published if complying with the standard requirements poses risks to physical safety.

What changed in response to comments on the draft law

One of the most contentious parts of the bill concerned how many members must remain on a council for it to continue working.

The Main Research and Expert Department of the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat pointed out that the original approach needed to be reconciled with the principle of collegiality in local self-government. Following revisions, the Committee proposed defining the limits of the exceptional mechanism more precisely: it will apply when no more than half, but no fewer than one-third, of the council’s members remain.

At the same time, it was proposed to remove the provision under which a council’s membership falling below half would automatically serve as grounds for establishing a military administration in the locality.

Losing some council members as a result of the war should not in itself mean that a community automatically loses a functioning local self-government body, as long as the council retains the minimum necessary representation and the ability to make decisions collegially.

For communities, it is critical that the war and the unavoidable decline in council membership do not lead to a situation where a council exists on paper but in practice cannot make budget, social, land, recovery, and other decisions on which the community’s life depends.

However, the exceptional rules needed under martial law must remain strictly limited in scope and duration. Lowering the threshold at which a council retains its authority must not become a general rule beyond the circumstances for which this mechanism is being created.

Likewise, adapting the requirements for council members’ reporting to security risks must not mean abandoning accountability itself. If a public event, advance notice of its venue, or another traditional format poses risks, the community should use safe alternatives that still allow voters to learn about their representatives’ work.

Our recommendations

Transparent Cities considers it advisable to support Draft Law No. 14405 as revised. However, when it is finally adopted and put into practice, it is important to preserve several fundamental safeguards:

• the special procedure should apply only to local councils that meet the criteria set out in the law and cannot fill vacant seats because elections cannot be held under martial law;
• the lower threshold of one-third of the council’s total membership should remain in place as a safeguard ensuring that the council stays capable of making decisions;
• council members performing military service should be protected from the negative consequences of failing to perform duties they are physically unable to fulfill because of their service;
• security-related exceptions for reporting should change its form, not abolish the principle of council members’ accountability to voters.

Because of the war, the early termination of council members’ powers, and the impossibility of holding elections, some small communities risk being left with councils that cannot function properly. The proposed mechanism should allow these communities to maintain functioning local self-government, ensure continuity in decision-making, protect the rights of council members serving in the Defense Forces, and adapt certain council procedures to wartime conditions. 

Proposed amendments

Draft law No. 16043 provides that cases on declaring assets unjustified and recovering them to the state revenue will be heard by a single HACC judge. A panel hearing (by three judges) will be possible only upon a motion by a defendant who holds one of the positions on an exhaustive list: a President of Ukraine whose powers have been terminated, member of parliament, Prime Minister, member of the Cabinet of Ministers, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Prosecutor General, Deputy Prosecutor General – Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Director of the State Bureau of Investigation, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, Head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, Head of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, Head of the Accounting Chamber, Head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, Head of the Central Election Commission, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Chair and judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Chair of the Supreme Court, heads of the high specialized courts, and Head of the High Council of Justice.

The draft law also sets out a mechanism for exercising this right. In its ruling on opening proceedings, the court will be required to explain to a defendant on the list their right to file a motion for a panel hearing. Such a motion may be filed only before the case is scheduled for trial on the merits; if it is submitted later, it will be left without consideration. The court will decide on a panel hearing at the preparatory hearing.

As for sanctions cases, the words “by a panel of three judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court” will simply be deleted from the Code of Administrative Procedure. Such cases will be heard by a single judge, with no exceptions and no list of parties entitled to request a panel hearing.

As in the previous version, the Final and Transitional Provisions retain the rule that the previous procedure (panel hearings) applies to both categories of cases in which proceedings were opened before the law enters into force.

What needs improvement

Our main criticism of Draft Law No. 14033 was that it did not specify at what stage, at whose initiative, and in what form the question of a panel hearing in a civil forfeiture case would be decided, relying instead on a vague “complexity” criterion. This concern closely mirrors a problem that the seventh HACC monitoring report has already identified with a similar mechanism in criminal proceedings (in effect since May 16, 2024): the lack of a consistent approach to when a defendant may exercise the right to a panel hearing. The defense has at times exploited this to delay proceedings, notably in the Rotterdam+ case.

The new draft law removes this uncertainty for civil cases, and it does so in precisely the way we suggested as a benchmark. This approach is consistent with the Venice Commission’s position that the allocation of cases, and any exceptions to it, should be based on objective, transparent criteria established in advance by law. It also reduces the risk of decisions being challenged on the grounds that the case was not heard by a “tribunal established by law.”

At the same time, two issues from our previous analysis remain unresolved. The deadlines for appeals in sanctions cases have still not been extended and remain at 5 days.

 

Conclusions

Transparency International Ukraine recommends adopting Draft Law No. 16043 at first reading and as a whole. 

The extension of the procedural deadlines for filing a statement of defense and an appeal in sanctions cases to 15 days should be addressed through a separate draft law.

 

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. 

Carthage: how the system worked

At the center of the NABU-SAPO investigation is Serhii Kropyva, Deputy Head of the International Cooperation Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, known on the released tapes by the alias “the Chancellor.” According to the investigation, he owed this to the patronage of “the Chief” himself. Before his appointment to the PGO in August 2025, Kropyva held senior positions in the Cyber Police for a long time (in particular, he was First Deputy Head of the Department), and later served as an advisor to the Prosecutor General and as Deputy Head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration for digitalization. 

According to the investigation, while holding a senior position at the PGO, Kropyva effectively took personal control over the management of criminal proceedings against fraudulent call centers (in particular, under Article 255 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, creation of a criminal organization, and Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, legalization (laundering) of criminally obtained property).

The scheme allegedly worked in two directions: 

• “covering” and clearing out the market, where call centers under their control were guaranteed immunity in exchange for bribes, while investigative actions and mass searches were carried out against their competitors to “stir things up”; 
• laundering of over UAH 89.9 million in criminally obtained property through overseeing networks of individual entrepreneurs, purchasing real estate (including in Bukovel), cryptocurrency transactions, acquiring luxury items, and registering assets in the names of front persons and close associates. 

The released materials from covert investigative actions revealed a new trend: the individuals in the case systematically studied the HACC’s case law on civil forfeiture, prepared potential witnesses for questioning at NABU, and used their knowledge of procedural nuances to counteract the anti-corruption agencies. 

It was precisely the positions held by the individuals in the case and their understanding of the process that made this investigation an extremely difficult task for NABU detectives. Pavlo Demchuk, Senior Legal Advisor at TI Ukraine, put it this way: 

“Such complex investigations into senior law enforcement officials only demonstrate that the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office are truly capable and independent. Documenting other law enforcement officers is a task of the highest difficulty, if only because they understand the methods and tools used by other employees of the prosecution service or the NABU. Given that international partners support anti-corruption reforms, such investigations only show that this support makes sense.”

From an “illusion of calm” to a resignation letter: how the SAPO tapes changed the Prosecutor General’s stance

The reaction of PGO head Ruslan Kravchenko to NABU’s first procedural actions was pointedly calm. He assured that his office was open, that the safe in the photo released by NABU did not belong to him, and that rumors of his escape were fabricated.

“I understand that many would like me to go into hiding, end up in the hospital, or something else. I’ll disappoint my fans. Yesterday I was at my workplace, today I’m working as usual and doing a bit of exercise,” Kravchenko insisted.

He made this statement even as the media was reporting that “the Chief” was none other than Kravchenko. Andrii Borovyk, Executive Director of TI Ukraine, pointed out that in such a situation, the head of an agency cannot remain in office as if nothing had happened. 

“It seems that the Prosecutor General could not have been unaware of this. From the standpoint of reputation and what is best for the country, the most logical thing would be for him to resign.”

And on September 6, during the HACC hearing on the preventive measure for Serhii Kropyva, SAPO prosecutor Mykola Karas dispelled any doubts about who was hiding behind the alias. He read out conversations between Kropyva and Kravchenko in which the former calls the latter “chief.”

“Hello. Yeah, Andreevich, yeah, chief. No, everything’s fine. No, nobody’s giving me a hard time. Who’d dare cross me? You’ve got my back, everyone knows it,” the prosecutor quoted Kropyva as saying.

When these materials were heard in court, the situation changed dramatically, and the clouds, as they say, gathered over the Prosecutor General. The very next day, according to sources of Ukrainska Pravda, after a late-night conversation with President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Kravchenko submitted his resignation letter, calling it a “political decision.”

Escalation and counterattack: Kravchenko signs a notice of suspicion for Kryvonos and abruptly leaves the country 

On the morning of September 14, despite his announced resignation, Kravchenko made a loud statement: he said he had signed a notice of suspicion for NABU Director Semion Kryvonos, as well as for a person “close to the head of SAPO” Oleksandr Klymenko. In his video address, he also said that his resignation was not an admission of guilt, the result of any deal, or a refusal to fight for his reputation. 

“Operation Carthage was aimed not only at me. Its real goal was to gain access to the materials of criminal proceedings concerning the heads and employees of the NABU and the SAPO. And after that, to remove the Prosecutor General and stop procedural decisions from being made in these cases,” Kravchenko said.

In the same address, he publicly accused Kryvonos of forging official documents to obtain an unlawful benefit and of a “fictitious adoption of a child” to artificially create grounds for evading liability in court. 

Meanwhile, alongside this media attack, an equally telling storyline was unfolding: immediately after these statements were published, it emerged that Kravchenko had left the country. Ukrainska Pravda was the first to report the details: at 2:30 a.m. on September 14, Kravchenko crossed the border in an official car. The official later stated that he was on a business trip abroad to inform international partners about “the real state of affairs in the system of anti-corruption agencies.”

The reaction of the public, the country’s leadership, and the anti-corruption sector only underscored the nature of this demarche. Volodymyr Zelenskyi publicly called on the Verkhovna Rada to immediately support Kravchenko’s dismissal, and the Presidential Office described his actions as unsanctioned freelancing. 

The NABU stated that no notice of suspicion had been officially served on Kryvonos. At a briefing on the situation, Klymenko said that none of the relatives he knew of had received notices of suspicion either, and that Kravchenko’s actions were a continuation of a systemic attack on the independent anti-corruption agencies, which began in earnest with last year’s attempts to subordinate NABU and SAPO to the Prosecutor General’s Office. Incidentally, the heads of the anti-corruption agencies had repeatedly warned about a planned attack on them, including at their press conferences. 

Transparency International Ukraine is convinced that these notices of suspicion are not the outcome of a lengthy investigation but a purely political and performative move designed for media effect. First, the proceedings concerning Kryvonos were entered into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations back on April 25, 2014, meaning they concern events from 12 years ago that lay dormant and relate to a period long before he became head of NABU. Second, the official proceedings concerning the “person close to Klymenko” relate to fraud and obstruction of the activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, not to “influencing HACC judges,” as Kravchenko publicly claimed. Finally, the very method of “serving” the notices, by sending them by mail to NABU’s address instead of delivering them in person, points to an effort to create public noise rather than achieve a procedural result.

All these actions clearly showed that when the law enforcement system operates on the principle of political appointments, its leaders, at a moment of crisis-level exposure, resort not to legal defense but to unprecedented institutional retaliation.

No integrity filter: how a man barred from the NABU and the SAPO came to head the Prosecutor General’s Office

What makes this story especially telling is not the scandal itself but how Kravchenko, before becoming Prosecutor General, tried to get into the anti-corruption agencies. In 2021, he took part in the competition for SAPO prosecutors, and in 2023, he sought the post of NABU Director. In both cases, Kravchenko was eliminated due to the selection commissions’ doubts about his integrity. 

In other words, a person whose candidacy was twice rejected in independent competitive selections became head of the Prosecutor General’s Office within a few years, without any competitive selection, through a purely political procedure. Almost immediately after his appointment, Kravchenko became one of the chief lobbyists of the law that effectively subordinated to him the very agencies he had once been denied the chance to lead. 

On July 22, 2025, the Verkhovna Rada backed Draft Law No. 12414, which aimed to eliminate the independence of the NABU and the SAPO. Publicly defending these changes, Kravchenko assured: “We will be one family.” Only mass protests and pressure from international partners forced the authorities to reverse these provisions. 

“A year ago, they wanted to effectively subordinate the SAPO and the NABU to Ruslan Kravchenko, the Prosecutor General. He held that post then, and he holds it now. But a year later, the NABU and the SAPO, which he failed to subordinate, came to him,” says Andrii Borovyk. “Formally, they came to his subordinates. But, figuratively speaking, they came to his home, in quotation marks, of course.”

The question that remains open: who should decide who leads the prosecution service?

Kravchenko’s career in itself calls into question Ukraine’s established mechanism for appointing the Prosecutor General, where the decision is effectively made by the President and the Verkhovna Rada merely rubber-stamps it. It was precisely this logic that allowed a person twice screened out by the NABU and SAPO selection commissions to obtain a leadership position in the prosecution system without any competitive integrity filter at all, simply through a political decision.

And under the current government, such appointments have now failed for the third time in a row. Before Kravchenko, the post was held by Andrii Kostin, who was also appointed by the President and eventually resigned following a scandal over fake disability status obtained by regional prosecutors. Before him, the post was held by Iryna Venediktova, remembered for effectively “burying” NABU’s crucial investigation into Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Oleh Tatarov. And, as if by habit, both of Kravchenko’s predecessors, like him, had at one point failed a competitive selection: Kostin for the head of SAPO, and Venediktova in the competition for Supreme Court judges. Likewise, none of these Prosecutors General served the maximum six-year term.

Notably, the idea of replacing this political appointment with a transparent competition is not an abstract theory but an already formulated legislative proposal. Back in June 2026, long before Carthage, Draft Law No. 15343 was registered in the Verkhovna Rada. It proposes introducing an open competition for the post of Prosecutor General through the High Council of Justice with the involvement of international experts, as well as a procedure for a vote of no confidence in the Prosecutor General. The authors of the document directly named the problem that this whole story illustrates: “The Prosecutor General’s Office becomes politically dependent on whoever is in power,” precisely because the Prosecutor General is currently appointed by the President with the consent of the Verkhovna Rada rather than by an independent selection commission. 

It is worth noting that introducing competitions for prosecutors of the PGO and regional prosecutor’s offices is also one of the conditions for Ukraine to receive EUR 550 million from the EU under the Ukraine Facility. And the European Commission reminded of this once again after Kravchenko’s scandalous statements.

In other words, these warnings were voiced long before Kropyva and Kravchenko, and each time they came true in almost the same scenario: a political appointment, then a loss of trust, then a loud scandal and resignation. 

The systemic lesson of Carthage: from reputational fires to institutional change

Reducing the Carthage case to luxury watches, mansions, or the personal greed of individual officials means ignoring its main challenge. The scale of this scheme and the scandal that followed became possible not only because of the particular brazenness of the individuals in the case but also because of the architecture of the prosecution system itself. When appointments to key positions are made behind closed doors rather than through a transparent competition, officials answer not to the law but to their personal “chief.”

The NABU-SAPO operation proved the capacity of the anti-corruption infrastructure, but this victory is fragile. Changing specific names in PGO offices will not stop new “Chancellors” from emerging if the principle by which people get these positions remains unchanged.

The only way out of this cycle is to depoliticize the post of Prosecutor General, close systemic loopholes, and hold accountable those who abuse their position. 

 

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.

Anti-corruption reform and the path to the EU

The first discussion was devoted to the link between anti-corruption reform and Ukraine’s movement toward the EU. It was moderated by Andrii Borovyk, Executive Director of Transparency International Ukraine.

The panelists discussed whether Ukraine’s anti-corruption system has “worked,” and whether the involvement of international experts in the competitions for anti-corruption bodies has proven its worth — including, in particular, the recent selection of 16 new judges for the HACC and its Appeals Chamber. They also touched separately on the accusations that the anti-corruption institutions are “too independent.”

Andrii Borovyk noted that the two main public demands right now are the fight against corruption and EU membership. He invited each speaker to name a single decision Ukraine should take over the next 12 months to come a few steps closer to the European Union. 

Allan Pagh Kristensen, Head of the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI), declined to pick a single step and stressed that the EU accession process calls for a comprehensive approach to fighting corruption as well. Among the priorities, he singled out the independence, capacity, and effectiveness of institutions. 

Anastasiia Radina, Head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy, likewise did not choose a single decision but named three priorities: 

1) access to independent forensic examination for the NABU and the SAPO;

2) reform of the SBI (linked to protecting the NABU from political influence); 

3) a draft law to curb procedural abuses by the defense.

Vira Mykhailenko, a HACC judge, agreed with the other participants on the need for comprehensive approaches. For her part, she named as priorities the integrity and transparency of public institutions, as well as safeguarding their independence.

Andrii Borovyk also asked whether the involvement of international experts in selecting HACC judges had truly proven its worth. Vira Mykhailenko answered in the affirmative: it adds a lens that heightens the visibility of possible problems and makes it possible to reach the right decision.

Anastasiia Radina, for her part, emphasized that involving international experts in the competitions for the NABU, the SAPO, the HACC, and others is no panacea, but that with them we can hope for a better outcome. She also explained that the key issue right now remains changing the procedure for selecting the SBI director (one of the requirements under the Ukraine Facility plan), where international experts so far play a rather decorative role in decision-making.

“I don’t think a situation like this is possible in every democratic country — where, at an event marking an institution’s anniversary, there is a discussion carrying a degree of criticism, with restrained optimism or pessimism. We may like some things and dislike others. But the very ability to say so openly is a sign of democracy and of a nation’s maturity,” Andrii Borovyk said, summing up the discussion.

The HACC in practice: figures and challenges

During the second panel, the moderator, Stanislav Borys — an attorney and head of the Committee on Criminal and Criminal Procedure Law at the Ukrainian Bar Association — noted that the NABU, the SAPO, the HACC, and the Supreme Court are helping to build a strong, independent state governed by the rule of law.

In particular, during this discussion Pavlo Demchuk, Senior Legal Advisor at TI Ukraine, presented the findings of a report studying the HACC’s practice in 2023–2024. Among other things, he highlighted the following key conclusions:

• in 2019–2024, the HACC heard on average almost 24% of its cases per year;
• the concept of agreements works and is improving: a case that ends in a plea agreement is heard 24 times faster than one that goes through the full cycle;
• 7.4% of all proceedings are closed due to the expiry of limitation periods and pretrial investigation time limits. That is, the public receives no answer as to whether a person is guilty or not, even where significant damages were involved.

Pavlo Demchuk also mentioned a finding from this year’s HACC monitoring report: for the first time, the number of cases heard exceeded the number that came in (in the first half of 2026). In other words, the backlog of pending cases has begun to shrink.

Our expert also drew attention to the ineffectiveness of disciplinary liability for the abuse of procedural rights. 

“Even a disciplinary referral to the bar’s bodies does not always lead to the expected results. Out of 24 proceedings initiated, an actual disciplinary sanction was imposed in only one case,” Pavlo Demchuk noted.

We at TI Ukraine continue to follow the HACC’s work closely. In particular, we analyze the functional and organizational aspects of the court’s work and cover the handling of cases on the HACC Decided platform.

Watch the full broadcast of the event here:

Where these positive numbers come from

To my mind, the most telling thing is not the impression the figures themselves make, but what lies behind them. From the very start, hundreds of cases flowed into the HACC, and for years the backlog of pending cases grew relentlessly — from 149 in 2019 to 327 in 2025. This not only reflected the court’s rising workload; it also gave the HACC’s opponents grounds to question whether it should exist at all. 

But as the court built up experience and worked on its own mistakes, the picture began to shift. In 2025, the HACC heard a record 114 criminal cases, and in the first half of 2026 the number of cases heard (72) exceeded, for the first time, the number of new ones filed (71). The years-long accumulation of pending proceedings finally halted — and even edged down, from 327 to 322 cases. 

As for verdicts, in the first half of 2026 alone the HACC handed down 65: 82 persons were convicted and 8 acquitted. Given that the court delivered 109 verdicts in all of 2025, the current figures again point to a marked rise in its output. It also applied special confiscation to 10 persons, confiscating almost UAH 71.8 million in the process.

Over seven years, the HACC has handed down 431 verdicts concerning 601 persons: 398 convictions and 33 acquittals, with 211 of the convictions based on agreements. Those convicted include judges, prosecutors, heads of state enterprises, members of the government, and former and sitting members of parliament. Custodial sentences have gone, among others, to sitting MP Anatolii Hunko, former Prosecutor General’s Office official Dmytro Sus, former MP Ruslan Solvar, and Orest Furdychko, former director of the Institute of Agroecology of the NAAS.

A separate result of the HACC’s work is the civil forfeiture of unjustified assets: property worth almost UAH 230 million in total has been seized from 48 officials. 

These figures capture only part of the picture. To see the fuller one, it matters how many convictions have entered into legal force, how many of those convicted are actually behind bars, and how many of them are senior officials. It is just as important to distinguish between the fines, confiscations, and compensation for damage to the state that have been imposed and those that have actually been enforced. The corresponding measure of the Rule of Law Roadmap was due to be implemented by the end of 2026.

Voluntary payments under agreements — contributions for the needs of the Armed Forces, in particular — serve a public good, but they are not a punishment, and they are hard to classify as the recovery of resources the state has lost. Even so, they show how the tools of criminal justice are being used to help replenish the budget.

So where did this positive change come from? There are several explanations.

First, single-judge proceedings — introduced in law back in 2024 — have proven their effectiveness in practice: the share of cases heard by a single judge has risen from 22% to 29% of all proceedings before the HACC. 

The difference in time is striking. Single-judge cases wrap up in about 11 months on average, whereas panel proceedings drag on for nearly 3 years and 9 months. In some instances a single judge proved faster still: the case of Viktoriia Poltavchenko, acting director of one of the state enterprises of an NAAS institute, took the court just 5 months. Even the longer proceedings in this format stay within relatively moderate bounds — the case of Anatolii Khmilkivskyi, a member of the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District Council in Odesa Region, took exactly one year.

Another factor likely to reinforce this momentum is the court’s long-awaited new personnel. The two judges appointed through the second HACC competition are already presiding over a number of high-profile proceedings, which has noticeably eased the court’s load. And since the President of Ukraine has by now appointed a further 17 winners of the competition to judgeships at the HACC and its Appeals Chamber, the scale of the reinforcement will grow further still. The appointment of another 5 judges, meanwhile, remains in limbo.

It is also worth looking at the make-up of verdicts over the past 12 months — from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. In that time, the number of verdicts based on agreements rose to 72, up from 58 in the previous 12 months, although their share of all convictions slipped slightly, from 66% to 62%.

For the first time, too, there have been cases where a person convicted under an agreement still serves an actual, if shorter, sentence. Under one of the highest-profile agreements of the past year, former Chairman of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Kniaziev was nonetheless sentenced to 4 years behind bars. The approach to transparency is changing as well: in the case of Oleksii Basan, head of the Agency of Local Roads of Poltava Region, the court sealed only part of the information from public access rather than the entire verdict, as had usually been the practice. This is still an exception rather than the norm, but the very fact that the approach is being used matters. 

That said, a rising number of agreements does not in itself prove they are effective. In top-level corruption cases, their value lies not only in a faster verdict but also in incriminating testimony against other participants and the organizers of schemes. Such information cannot always be made public right away, so as not to harm the ongoing investigation. But in due course it should be assessed whether that testimony led to new verdicts. For now, SAPO’s policy on concluding agreements and its criteria for “public interest” are not always clear, and some verdicts are sealed in full. So the SAPO and the HACC need not only to use this tool but also to explain its purpose and results to the public convincingly.

The numbers explain why the public views such agreements warily. Almost half of the accused undertook to transfer between UAH 10,000 and UAH 20 million for the needs of the Armed Forces, yet defendants received actual — if reduced — prison terms in only three cases. Nor did the parties agree on large fines as an additional punishment. According to a TI Ukraine survey, 60% of Ukrainians consider actual punishment — imprisonment or the confiscation of property — the main criterion of an effective fight against corruption.

It is important to understand the nature of the progress described here. It is not that the HACC has “learned” to work more effectively under unchanged conditions; rather, it shows that the tools adopted earlier by the legislature — often imperfectly drafted, riddled with gaps and ambiguities — have finally begun to yield measurable results in practice. 

Single-judge proceedings, for one — unquestionably a step forward — still lack a consistent approach to when the accused may demand that a panel of judges hear the case after all. And unjustified exceptions that bar single-judge hearings for certain categories of officials (for instance, cases involving MPs’ false asset declarations) narrow the mechanism’s potential. Yet even in this half-built form, single-judge proceedings work — and, as we can see, to tangible effect.

Why the upward trend in the HACC’s efficiency is still fragile

The reason is that the external problems — the ones whose solution depends above all on parliament — have gone unaddressed for years. Which means the progress achieved could be lost at any moment.

Take the ineffective regulation of limitation periods, which we have consistently documented since 2023: it has not merely gone unresolved but has grown worse. A lengthy trial in a top-level corruption case does not, in itself, interrupt the running of the limitation period, so proceedings can end not in a finding of guilt but in the person’s release once the time set by law has elapsed. Interrupting the period would mean that, after an event defined by law, the count starts anew rather than resuming from the point where it was suspended. Over the past year, the number of people released from liability because those periods expired rose from 13 to 22, and those released from punishment from one to nine.

The lion’s share of these closures fall under Articles 364 and 368 of the Criminal Code — among the very articles used to classify top-level corruption. On this ground, those released from liability include former Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Prysiazhniuk, suspected of securing an unlawful win for private firms in Agrarian Fund tenders worth more than UAH 521 million, and all four defendants at once in the case of corruption at the Odesa Port, with damages exceeding UAH 21 million. The specific problems that led to these limitation periods expiring — and the handling of such cases more broadly — can be followed on our HACC Decided platform.

Pressure on the court and attempts to reassess its institutional capacity — like what unfolded around the Vlasenko-Buzhanskyi Temporary Investigative Commission — add no stability either. We studied the commission’s report and concluded that the document rests on selective analysis and contains a good many illogical and manipulative conclusions. 

The HACC’s effectiveness cannot be reduced to the ratio between the cost of running it and the money recovered for the budget. The court’s core task is independent and fair justice in top-level corruption cases, and its public value is measured also by the inevitability of punishment and by trust in its rulings.

At the same time, the public has every right to know the financial side of the HACC’s work too: how much the state spends to run it, and what volume of confiscations, fines, and compensation has not only been imposed but actually enforced. The absence of consolidated data does not make this a manipulative question — it points to the need for a separate analysis.

The commission’s own chair, Serhii Vlasenko, publicly alleged pressure and political persecution by the NABU, the SAPO, and the HACC even before the commission had finished its work — which alone casts doubt on the impartiality of its final conclusions. Episodes like this divert the court’s resources and attention from its core job.

One more point worth stating plainly again: the HACC is a body of justice, not part of an investigator-prosecutor tandem. That means the court’s task is not to produce results together with the NABU and the SAPO, but first and foremost to test the quality of their work impartially. And that is precisely why, among other things, the court must acquit defendants where the prosecution has failed to prove its case. 

Let me also recall that the NABU and the SAPO are only one side of the process, alongside defense attorneys and the accused. The fact that detectives and prosecutors are pursuing ever more high-profile investigations of senior officials raises the stakes for the court, but it does not make the HACC an “extension” of the investigation. On the contrary, the prominence of these investigations underscores just how critically important the Anti-Corruption Court’s institutional independence is. 

And although most high-profile proceedings — such as the Midas and Dynasty cases — are still at the investigation stage, the HACC has already shown its consistency and impartiality in choosing preventive measures for the defendants in them. The case against Yuliia Tymoshenko, by contrast, moved from pretrial investigation to trial fairly quickly. In preparing for the hearing, the defense deployed the argument that no judge could be impartial toward the politician given her long-standing rhetoric. For now, the case is at the preparatory hearing stage.

What it will take to turn a hint of positive change into a trend

Without legislative change, the positive trend will remain fragile. It could swing unpredictably from case to case and from period to period, depending on which proceedings happen to reach their conclusion in a given year.

To consolidate the trend, parliament needs to:

1. Adopt amendments to Article 49 of the Criminal Code that genuinely interrupt — rather than merely suspend — the running of limitation periods in top-level corruption cases.
2. Give the court effective tools against the abuse of procedural rights — in particular, the power to impose monetary penalties on defense attorneys.
3. Abolish the automatic closure of cases over the formal expiry of pretrial investigation time limits.
4. Remove the ambiguity around the point of transition to panel proceedings and scrap the unjustified exceptions to single-judge proceedings.

For years we have watched the people’s elected representatives fail to pass these changes — even though they have been raised time and again at various levels. Perhaps one reason has been that more and more MPs are themselves becoming defendants in corruption cases. Perhaps it lies in the stagnation of the Rada’s own work in the eighth year of this convocation. But these and other arguments can no longer stand as excuses for not making the changes that are needed. 

New challenges have emerged, too — tied not only to the size of bail in top-level corruption cases but also to the origin of the funds that third parties and companies post on suspects’ behalf. A telling example is the bail for former minister Herman Halushchenko, which the court reduced from UAH 200 million to UAH 150 million. According to the investigation, this money was collected and laundered through dozens of enterprises and more than a hundred financial transactions, after which four companies transferred it to a dedicated HACC account. Among those the investigation suspects of organizing the scheme is Iryna Mudra, former Deputy Head of the Office of the President. Mudra herself, meanwhile, had bail set at UAH 20 million.

These cases raise a broader question: who should verify that bail money is of lawful origin, and at what stage — and should the court react if the money comes from companies with a questionable financial history? The same goes for the compensation, restitution, and payments to the Armed Forces made under agreements: is the origin of these funds, and of the payers themselves, ever checked? The relevant legislative initiatives have already been registered in the Verkhovna Rada, but their consideration remains in limbo. We will describe the possible mechanisms for such checks, and the specifics of concluding plea agreements in top-level corruption cases, in separate materials.

How transparent and well-reasoned bail decisions are will determine trust in preventive measures in top-level corruption cases. The effectiveness of agreements, by contrast, should be judged by other criteria: the fairness of the punishment, the value of the incriminating testimony, the recovery of lost resources for the state, and a result the public can understand.

Since returning from recess, MPs have not taken up a single anti-corruption initiative. They even struck from the agenda the draft Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–2030 — and the timely adoption of that document, by the end of September, is tied not only to a coherent fight against corruption but also to Ukraine’s financial support under the Ukraine Facility Plan. This matters for the HACC as well: without a coherent state anti-corruption policy, the legislative amendments the court needs will keep being passed piecemeal or postponed.

As long as parliament keeps putting off the decisions that are needed, the progress the HACC has achieved will remain fragile.

1. NABU and SAPO are among the most independent law enforcement bodies there are — impervious to pressure even from the highest offices of the state. Even when it comes to the Office of the President.

On the tapes, Mudra and Mykytas say plainly that walking into the anti-corruption agencies with the kind of offers or pressure that pass for “business as usual” in Ukrainian politics is a waste of effort. The people caught in these conversations openly acknowledge the autonomy of the NABU and the SAPO, all but stating outright that Bankova Street — the seat of the President’s Office — is no longer an umbrella that can guarantee immunity or quietly bury a case. This is the best proof that, over years of reform, the NABU and the SAPO have managed to build a durable immunity to instructions from outside.

For society and for international partners, this is an important marker of the anti-corruption institutions’ genuine independence. When an investigation reaches officials of the rank of a deputy head of the Office of the President, it shows that there are no “untouchables,” whatever their post or their proximity to the rooms where decisions are made. In this instance, institutional independence outran private political arrangements. And it likewise showed that last year’s protests in defense of NABU’s and SAPO’s independence were not in vain.

2. Today’s senior officials do not shrink from taking part in schemes alongside people already suspected or accused of corruption.

Take Mykytas: the Forrest Gump case brings his fifth notice of suspicion. Despite a toxic background, a trail of criminal proceedings, and life spent permanently in law enforcement’s sights, such figures remain sought-after partners for those currently in power — because they know how to “sort things out” and have no shortage of the right contacts. This points to a deep deformation of power, one in which well-worn schemes and ready-made connections are prized above any reputational risk.

Bringing such people in underscores how narrow the circle is of those willing to run dubious operations at the very top. Senior officials, in all likelihood, knowingly join forces with those whose reputations are already compromised, in the hope that status and the levers of influence they hold can offset their partners’ toxicity. Yet each new notice of suspicion only multiplies the systemic failures of that cooperation.

3. Many of the powerful, for all their assurances to international partners, still want to establish controlling influence over the anti-corruption bodies.

Public declarations of devotion to reform and to meeting the demands of European integration regularly shatter against behind-the-scenes attempts to bring key institutions to heel. For many in government, the independence of NABU and SAPO remains a convenient slogan meant for external consumption only, while inside the system the search for “loopholes” and levers of influence never stops. The urge to control how leadership is appointed, how investigations unfold, or how audits are conducted has gone nowhere — nor have designs on assembling one’s own “personnel reserve” for these institutions.

This double standard poses a constant threat to the country’s entire anti-corruption architecture. Attempts to install loyal people, or to curb the procedural independence of prosecutors and detectives, expose the heart of the matter: those in power still treat a controllable law enforcement as an element of their own security. That is precisely why safeguarding these bodies’ independence remains a daily challenge, not a task already accomplished.

4. A senior official’s sound decisions and good deeds do not earn them an indulgence.

For all Iryna Mudra’s work in setting up the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, her part in the scheme to raise bail for Halushchenko and in the corporate raiding of state enterprises will not be forgotten. For a long time, Mudra was regarded as a key driver of the international reparations mechanisms, yet the suspicion has dealt a serious blow to her reputation. Political reality makes the point: no past merits, no lofty affairs of state, can serve as a “shield” or an advance credit to justify unlawful acts.

The wartime and diplomatic context only raise the bar society sets for officials’ ethics. She will enter Ukrainian history and the public record not through her appearances on international stages, but through her banal participation in shadow schemes to launder funds and unlawfully redistribute assets. It is a sobering lesson for everyone in the corridors of power: public achievements do not paper over hidden, allegedly corrupt acts, and society will not hand out indulgences for past accomplishments.

5. We do not know how deep corruption runs or how far it has spread, but it is becoming ever harder to conceal. And the conditions are now in place for those guilty in such schemes to be punished.

Since last November, after the first notices of suspicion in the Midas case, we have seen a further string of high-profile investigations, and their range — like the range of people drawn into them — keeps widening. But we can already see the momentum of these cases, and the very fact that this work is being done speaks less to how widespread corruption is than to the strong likelihood that it will be exposed, and that those named will stand trial. 

The steady stream of new notices of suspicion lays bare the real depth of the problem, but at the same time it establishes a fundamentally new level of transparency. The systematic work of the anti-corruption institutions is gradually changing the risk arithmetic for would-be corrupt actors: the cost of exposure is coming to outweigh any potential shadow profit. When law enforcement works without regard for high office, the sheer inevitability of disclosure ought to become the most powerful tool for preventing likely new crimes. And it is already working: as we recall, officials at the Ministry of Justice never did agree to cooperate with the organized criminal group led by Mykytas and Mudra.

6. Nationalizing a Russian asset does not mean it will work well for Ukraine.

This is a lesson not yet learned and not yet fully worked through, but the warning flags are already up. For it was precisely after the Russian Alfa-Bank was nationalized and turned into the state-owned Sense Bank that the conditions emerged for interested parties to install the people they needed on its board and to push the operations they wanted through the bank. Nationalizing enemy property under patriotic slogans effectively opened the way to creating a new shadow resource under the roof of state institutions. Swapping the nominal owner from a Russian oligarch to the Ukrainian state did not change the substance: the bank came under threat of turning into a captive instrument for scheming.

This episode throws light on one of the gravest systemic dangers in the process of stripping Russian property out of the Ukrainian economy: without independent management, seized assets become a tempting morsel for operators on the inside. Handing property into state ownership without transparent public oversight and independent management only breeds the temptation to use these resources to legalize dirty money or serve private interests. Confiscating an asset from the enemy is only a quarter of the job; the main thing is to keep it from being plundered or commandeered once it is inside the country.

SSU Pressure on Judges and Investigators

The SAPO head explained that the SSU is systematically pressuring judges through threats to their relatives, the revocation of reserved status, and mobilization — all to secure the rulings it wants in cases involving NABU detectives.

So, the problem of pressure on the anti-corruption law enforcement bodies, which came to a head on the eve of the cardboard protests, has not gone away; and although it is discussed less now, it still gets in the way.

An Attempt to Take Control of SAPO Through the Deputy Selection

Klymenko claims that one scenario for establishing control over SAPO is to win the competitive selection for deputy head — the stage that is currently accepting applications. That process is already mired in a few scandals. After that, according to Klymenko, interested parties would be in no hurry to hold the selection for the head. Part of the SAPO head’s powers would then rest with the Prosecutor General.

This is a real risk. We have already lived through a period when SAPO went almost two years without a full-fledged head, while the then-Prosecutor General, Iryna Venediktova, stalled certain cases and all but sank the Tatarov case entirely. And on the tapes in the Forrest Gump case, Iryna Mudra, a subject of that case, also mentioned this selection.

A Lack of Political Will

Asked whether the state has the political will to fight corruption, the SAPO head answered directly and without reservation: it does not. Given the pace of delivery on anti-corruption commitments under the Kachka-Kos plan and the European Commission’s recommendations, these statements are, unfortunately, borne out by reality.

SAPO’s Institutional Dependence on the Prosecutor General

Despite SAPO’s procedural independence, investigating MPs still requires the Prosecutor General’s approval — and Klymenko admits this substantially limits what the anti-corruption prosecution can do.

It is worth mentioning here that expanding the powers of the SAPO head is yet another of Ukraine’s European integration commitments — one on which, nearly a year after the European Commission’s latest report, we have still seen no movement.

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. 

 

Step 1 — This is a proposal, not a decision

The Commission’s Rules of Procedure and the Law of Ukraine on the Prosecutor’s Office distinguish between two separate actions:

• the Commission has the right only to submit a proposal to the Prosecutor General for the early termination of one of its members’ powers;
• the decision on the termination of powers itself is taken solely by the Prosecutor General, who in doing so also designates a replacement member of the Selection Commission.

This means that, as of today, no legal consequences for Oleksii Shevchuk’s status have arisen. Formally, he remains a member of the Commission with the full scope of his rights — including the right to vote, to take part in meetings, and to receive all materials. The composition of the Commission provided for by law (six persons) has not changed as of today.

This is an important point, because it means that any argument about the Commission’s “lack of authority” on account of incomplete membership currently has not the slightest factual basis, since the composition remains complete until the Prosecutor General takes his own decision.

Step 2 — The law sets no deadline for the Prosecutor General to respond

Article 29-1 of the Law sets no time limit within which the Prosecutor General must respond to the Commission’s proposal. It does, however, provide that, where grounds exist for the early termination of a Selection Commission member’s powers, the Prosecutor General takes a decision on the early termination of that member’s powers and, in doing so, designates a replacement member of the Selection Commission in accordance with the procedure established by this part for designating members of the Selection Commission.

Step 3 — If the Prosecutor General decides on a removal

The Law requires that, simultaneously with the decision to terminate powers, the Prosecutor General designate a replacement candidate — under the same procedure as for forming the Commission as a whole (nominations from the Council of Prosecutors). That amounts to up to 20 working days for the nomination of candidates (by the Council of Prosecutors) and a further up to 10 working days for appointment by the Prosecutor General. 

For reference, when filling the “prosecutorial” quota of the Selection Commission, the Council of Prosecutors began compiling the list of candidates on November 27, and the Prosecutor General actually appointed the commission members (one of whom was Oleksii Shevchuk) on December 23 — so the process took less than a month. 

How well-founded is the claim of the Commission’s “lack of authority” and a “suspended competition”?

Shevchuk himself has already claimed that the Commission is supposedly without authority, and that further competition procedures, including the acceptance of candidates’ documents, cannot therefore be regarded as legitimate until the question of the Commission’s full composition is resolved. Let us examine this claim point by point.

First, it is premature at the level of facts alone: no decision to change the Commission’s composition yet exists. The composition is the same as before, including the very author of this argument. The assertion of an “incomplete composition” describes a hypothetical future situation, not what is happening now.

Second, even if the Prosecutor General were to decide on a removal in the future, and the appointment of a replacement were to drag on (on precedent, for several weeks), this would not necessarily mean the paralysis of the Commission’s work. The Rules of Procedure and Article 29-1 of the Law itself separately set the threshold for taking decisions at a meeting — the participation of at least four of the six members (including no fewer than two members from the “international” quota) and, where such a quorum cannot be assembled within 10 days or across two consecutive meetings, even three members. 

These provisions are designed precisely for situations in which the commission temporarily operates without its full composition; otherwise they would make no sense. A comparative analysis of the work of similar selection commissions — for NABU, the Economic Security Bureau, and ARMA — shows that the legislator has consistently built exactly this logic into all such competitions.

This means that even in a hypothetical future period of vacancy, when a replacement has not yet been appointed, the Commission most likely retains a legal basis to continue holding meetings provided a quorum is present.

Third, as regards the acceptance of candidates’ documents: this stage is an administrative procedure whose deadlines (from 9:00 a.m. on August 19 to 6:00 p.m. on September 21) were set and published in advance on the basis of a separate announcement by the Commission in accordance with paragraphs 9.1–9.3 of the Rules of Procedure. Neither the Rules of Procedure nor the Law ties the validity of this document intake to the Commission’s current personal composition. The assertion that the submission of documents “cannot be regarded as a proper continuation of the competition procedure” is not based on any specific provision of the Rules of Procedure or the Law.