How the sale of seized assets was previously regulated

Before July 1 of this year, the sale of seized assets was governed not by a single act but by several government resolutions at once. A significant update to the process took place in November 2023, when auctions became possible on the Prozorro.Sale marketplaces.

The central figure in the process was not ARMA itself but a separate auction organizer — a legal entity that ARMA selected on a competitive basis under a dedicated procedure (Resolution No. 558). The organizer received a fee of 1% of the sale price for assets in Ukraine and up to 15% for assets abroad, and it was the organizer that was responsible for preparing the lot, valuing it, storing it, and supporting the auction. 

The auction had three consecutive stages: the first involved three rounds of real-time price increases; the second (a “repeat” auction) started at 50% of the first auction’s price; and the third (a “repeat” auction using the step-by-step price-reduction method, that is, a Dutch auction) likewise started at 50% of the initial price. The number of price-reduction steps at the third stage was not separately fixed in the Procedure — it was set by the operating regulations of the electronic trading system, meaning the administrator could change it without amending the resolution.

The auction preparation period was framed as a minimum — no fewer than 15 calendar days for real estate and no fewer than 10 days for perishable movable property.

The set of persons barred from purchasing assets was based on the official FATF list of states, the threshold of “10% or more of the shares of a resident of the aggressor state,” and a standard list of sanctions- and offshore-related restrictions. The Procedure contained no express ban on persons related to the asset’s owner or to a suspect or accused in the case — meaning a party to the proceedings could, in theory, buy back their own asset through a front person.

The sale of assets abroad required the competitive selection of a foreign organizer, and ARMA was obliged to inform the Cabinet of Ministers of the winner of that competition, whereupon the Cabinet adopted a separate decision recorded in its minutes.

What has changed in the sale of seized assets

The ARMA is now the auction organizer itself, and the separate, competitively selected organizer legal entity no longer exists.

A new anti-corruption rule has appeared — a ban on the purchase of an asset by persons related to the asset’s owner or to a suspect or accused, with a detailed list of indicators of relatedness (drawn from the Tax Code, the Law on Corruption Prevention, and the Law on Joint-Stock Companies. This closes a loophole that the old regulation had left open.

A maximum auction preparation period has been set — no more than 15 days for immovable property and 10 for movable property — which may speed up the turnover of assets.

The number of Dutch-auction steps at the third stage is now fixed directly in the Procedure — 99 steps — rather than left to the discretion of the administrator’s regulations.

The sale of assets abroad has been simplified — instead of the competitive selection of a foreign organizer and a mandatory minuted decision by the Cabinet of Ministers, there are now three clear methods of sale with no additional approval procedure: sale by the competent authorities of the foreign state, transfer of the asset to Ukraine, or another method provided for by an international treaty.

In the list of ineligible buyers, the aggressor state is now supplemented by an express reference to the Republic of Belarus, and the ownership criterion has been changed from “10% of shares” to “holders of a significant participation.”

The auction process itself has accordingly been simplified, and can be represented schematically as follows:

1. Valuation and decision — the ARMA values the asset and decides to sell it.
2. Announcement — published at least 7 days before the auction.
3. Registration — participants submit applications and pay a registration fee and a security deposit.
4. First auction — ascending price, three rounds of 3 minutes each, 1% increment.
5. If unsold, a second auction — the starting price is halved, again ascending.
6. If unsold, a third auction — Dutch format, with the price reduced automatically (99 steps).
7. Signing of the auction record and payment — the winner pays within 5 days.
8. Transfer of ownership — after payment; the seizure must additionally be lifted through the investigating judge.

Areas for improvement and points of risk

Although the adopted Procedure regulates the procedural aspects of the sale of seized assets reasonably well, certain points still call for attention. Some of them fall outside the Procedure itself and relate to adjacent provisions of the law. Others are matters that cannot be conclusively settled at the rule-making stage and only surface in the course of practical application, and therefore require further refinement as experience accumulates.

No notification of the owner and no right to appeal the sale decision

International standards on the sale of seized assets recommend that the owner and interested third parties be notified of the sale decision and have the right to challenge it in court. Current legislation contains no such mechanism: ARMA’s decision to sell an asset is published on ARMA’s official website, but this is more a matter of informing the general public than a personal notification.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the legal basis for the sale itself — the investigating judge’s ruling on the transfer of property for sale, issued under Article 100(6)(2) of the CPC of Ukraine — is currently not subject to appeal at all. By Resolution No. 17 of September 12, 2025, the Plenum of the Supreme Court has already applied to the Constitutional Court with a petition on the unconstitutionality of Articles 309 and 392 of the CPC of Ukraine, specifically in the part that makes such a ruling impossible to appeal.

It would therefore be advisable to address this problem proactively and provide for the possibility of appealing rulings on the transfer of property for sale.

No methodology for forming lots

The adopted act assigns the division of an asset into lots to the organizer (now ARMA itself) without setting any criteria or methodology for such division. Yet the sale of land on the Borzhava polonyna (460 hectares and ski-lift stations, an asset in the State Investment Project case) shows what unregulated discretion leads to:

• the asset was put up for auction three times through three different organizers, with the valuation falling successively from more than UAH 1.067 billion to UAH 347.9 million;
• the lots (245 + 208 + 41 land plots) were formed on the basis of a letter from SAPO, and ARMA’s justification amounted to a general assertion of “maximum commercial appeal,” with no public methodology or criteria;
• despite the repeat auctions, buyer interest remained low right up to the final successful sale — the asset was ultimately bought by persons related to the parties in the original case, though ARMA did not sign the sale record.

Because the structure and number of lots directly affect the range of potential buyers, market appeal, and the final price, the absence of a standardized approach to forming them is a systemic risk — the matter is left entirely to ARMA’s discretion, without any procedural safeguards or requirements to give reasons.

It would therefore be desirable for ARMA’s internal acts to define the procedure for dividing an asset or assets into lots, including criteria for combining or splitting property, requirements for justifying the chosen lot configuration, and the recording of that justification in the materials accompanying the sale decision.

The need for active monitoring of asset sales

The Borzhava case also shows the value of systematic rather than reactive oversight of how auctions unfold. The Prozorro.Sale analytics module makes it possible to track in real time precisely the indicators that in this case became problematic only after the fact: the number of failed auction attempts for the same asset, the pace at which the appraised value dropped between attempts, changes of organizers, and the intervals elapsing between them.

This also matters given that in 2025 the Prozorro.Sale system hosted 184 electronic auctions for the sale of seized assets, of which only 41 were successful. In that same year, ARMA received 33 rulings on the sale of assets, of which only 4 were carried out. In total, sales were completed under 20 rulings over the past year.

These results may be linked both to the complexity of the previous sale procedure (a legal entity had first to be selected on a competitive basis to act as auction organizer) and to the fact that not all of the assets transferred for sale were attractive to buyers — in part because of the lots in which they were offered.

Regular tracking of asset sales should therefore be ensured, so that potentially problematic cases can be addressed before a sale is completed rather than afterwards, when recovery is more difficult.

Conclusions and recommendations

The adopted resolution is a sound step in reforming the mechanism for selling seized assets. It also incorporates a substantial body of established international standards on auction transparency and conflict-of-interest prevention. The basic auction mechanics have remained stable throughout, which reduces the risks of the transition period.

That said, the adoption of this act is the beginning, not the end, of work on the asset-sale process. Some of the problems identified fall outside the secondary legislation itself and require changes at the level of primary law. Others — the division of assets into lots, and the quality and speed of sales in practice — cannot be exhaustively regulated in advance and emerge only in specific cases.

To strengthen these processes, we can recommend the following:

• To the Verkhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers — respond to the constitutional petition concerning the right to appeal rulings on the transfer of property for sale by making the corresponding amendments to the CPC of Ukraine;
• To ARMA — regulate, through internal acts, the methodology for forming lots, so as to prevent a recurrence of situations in which assets lose value.

At this stage, then, what matters is not only targeted legislative fine-tuning but also the need for systematic monitoring of how the new Procedure is applied in practice. 

Key nuances of the Grand Chamber’s decisions

In the Burkhan case, the Grand Chamber noted that while information from covert-action records can be used in disciplinary proceedings, it cannot serve as a ready-made conclusion. The HCJ must carefully assess it first.

The Supreme Court also explained that what matters in a disciplinary case is not the type of evidence — including information from covert-action records — but a fair procedure for using such data. The HCJ must independently assess such materials and determine whether they confirm a specific disciplinary offense, even before the underlying criminal proceedings conclude.

At the same time, the ruling includes an important safeguard against wrongful disciplinary action based on such materials. The HCJ may discipline a judge before a criminal case concludes only if there are obvious, clear, and convincing signs of conduct incompatible with judicial status — and only if there is no arbitrariness, political persecution, or other improper motive, and the right to a defense has been respected. 

Acting on this basis, the HCJ dismissed DACK judge Bohdan Sanin on June 22 — one of the key figures in the DACK tapes case. Covert recordings captured him discussing court cases outside official proceedings, coordinating positions with others, and effectively allowing outside influence over judicial decisions. He was dismissed because this conduct is incompatible with judicial status.

However, if reasonable doubt remains, it must be resolved in the judge’s favor. In such cases, the HCJ must suspend disciplinary proceedings until a verdict is reached, or decline to impose liability.

How this will affect disciplinary proceedings against judges

After these rulings, the argument that covert-action materials cannot be used in disciplinary proceedings at all has far less chance of success. Judges challenging HCJ decisions will now have to prove specific procedural violations, rather than arguing that such materials are inherently inadmissible.

These rulings also give the HCJ clear guidance: beyond a general green light to use such materials, the Council must avoid citing them formally without proper assessment and justification.

In short, the Grand Chamber’s rulings stabilize HCJ practice in cases involving covert investigative action materials. They reduce the risk of a mass review of HCJ decisions already made — while still preserving real procedural safeguards for judges against the arbitrary use of criminal case materials and pressure against them.

Where things stand on the secondary legislation for ARMA’s work

The secondary instruments needed for the ARMA reform to function fully fall into the following categories: 

• institutional and organizational matters; 
• accountability and public oversight; 
• asset identification and intake into management; 
• selection of asset managers; 
• procurement of manager services; 
• asset management and oversight of it; asset disposal; 
• maintenance of the Unified State Register of Seized Assets (USRSA).

As of the second half of June 2026, nearly all the secondary legislation has been adopted; only the procedure for disposing of seized assets has yet to be updated.

The Methodology approved in June is one of the foundational elements of ARMA’s new regulatory architecture. This instrument governs the procedure for analyzing a seized asset to determine whether it can be managed effectively, and it also serves as an “entry filter” for the entire subsequent management process: without a positive conclusion from ARMA, an asset cannot be transferred into the Agency’s management.

How it used to be

Before the ARMA reform law took effect, there was no separate statutory rule on asset identification, nor any secondary instrument governing that procedure. Article 18-1 of the Law, which introduced the identification mechanism, is an entirely new provision. 

Before the reform, the practice was that the Agency issued written opinions on whether effective management of an asset could be ensured and its economic value preserved. However, the joint orders of the PGO and ARMA on the form of a request for such an opinion were never adopted, and the procedure for the Agency’s assessment of management feasibility was never regulated at the level of a Cabinet of Ministers resolution.

This produced several negative consequences: 

• ARMA took into management whatever it was given: an investigating judge’s ruling transferring an asset into management served as the sole and sufficient basis, and the Agency had no formal mechanism to assess in advance whether it could manage a particular asset effectively. As a result, assets accumulated at the Agency that it had no way of actually managing; neither the Law nor the secondary instruments required ARMA to conduct a mandatory site visit to inspect an asset before accepting it. 
•  Assets could therefore be transferred into management without proper documentation of their actual condition, which created risks of later disputes between the prosecutor and the Agency and made it impossible to plan management properly;
• the Law did not require ARMA to compare management and disposal options or assess an asset’s economic potential before deciding how to manage it;
•  interaction between prosecutors and ARMA at the stage preceding an asset’s transfer into management was ad hoc and unformalized. In practice, this led to assets being handed over with incomplete or contradictory information.

What the adopted Methodology sets out in detail 

The ARMA reform law introduced a fundamentally new model — a mandatory identification procedure as a precondition for accepting an asset into management — and the resolution adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers spells out that model at the secondary-legislation level. 

The key innovations are as follows: 

• Identification as a mandatory “entry filter.” ARMA manages only those seized assets for which a positive identification conclusion has been prepared (Article 18-1(1) of the Law). This is the first time the Agency’s right to assess management feasibility in advance has been enshrined in law;
• a standardized procedure for prosecutorial requests. The Methodology clearly defines the list of documents a prosecutor must attach to a request — title documents, a valuation report, technical specifications, photo and video materials — and sets the condition for submitting them: “where available and where doing so would not harm the criminal proceedings.” This balances ARMA’s need for information against the interests of the investigation;
• a mandatory physical inspection of the asset. The Methodology requires ARMA specialists to conduct an on-site visit to the asset’s actual location for inspection, documentation of its condition, and photo and video recording. The instruction to the relevant Interregional Territorial Department (ITD) of ARMA to accept an asset into management must be issued no later than the next business day after the request is received — a rule designed to keep the central office from stalling the start of the process;
• a comprehensive analysis of economic potential. The secondary legislation now requires ARMA to determine the optimal management approach through comparative analysis, weighing expected management income against the costs of storing and maintaining the asset. This provides the basis for a well-reasoned choice of strategy; 
• clear deadlines with a mechanism for extension. A baseline 10-day period is set for issuing a conclusion, extendable to 20 business days where grounds exist, provided a prosecutor is notified in writing within 5 business days. This removes the previous uncertainty over how long the procedure could take;
• a special regime for combat zones. The Methodology introduces a new exception — a moratorium on identifying assets located in temporarily occupied territories or areas where hostilities are underway. This resolves the previous uncertainty over such assets and ties the resumption of their identification to the official list maintained by the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories.

What to watch for during implementation

Despite the clear progress this regulation represents, its practical implementation may reveal certain shortcomings that should be tracked and promptly corrected through amendments to the relevant instruments. Some questions, moreover, were already apparent when the amendments to the ARMA Law were first adopted. 

Inconsistency with the Criminal Procedure Code

One of the key systemic risks remains the mismatch between the new identification procedure introduced by the ARMA reform law and the current version of Ukraine’s Criminal Procedure Code (CPC). Article 100 of the CPC still does not require a positive ARMA conclusion as a precondition for a prosecutor to petition an investigating judge to transfer an asset into management. In practice, the CPC still allows a prosecutor to initiate an asset’s transfer to ARMA without going through identification at all, which conflicts with the logic of the amended Law.

Article 100(6) of the CPC also does not reflect the new grounds for asset disposal introduced by Law No. 4503-IX, and the existing mechanism for notifying ARMA (Article 100(7)) remains in a provision that would now logically belong in Article 175 of the CPC, as part of the enforcement of a seizure order. The CPC’s failure to establish corresponding prosecutorial obligations regarding deadlines for responding to an ARMA conclusion, or to a notice that an asset’s economic value cannot be preserved, creates a degree of legal conflict that, in practice, is likely to be resolved in favor of the special provisions of the ARMA Law.

No consequences defined for a negative ARMA conclusion

The Methodology sets out in detail the procedure for identifying an asset and preparing the Agency’s conclusion on whether it can be managed. It does not, however, define any legal consequences for cases where ARMA formally determines that effective management of a given asset is not possible.

What happens to the asset after that? Who is required to act, and within what timeframe? Can the prosecutor apply again? These questions remain unanswered, since ARMA cannot accept such an asset into management in these cases — and if an investigating judge nonetheless issues a ruling to that effect, it will not meet the requirements of the special provision, Article 18-1 of the ARMA Law.

Conclusions and recommendations

The resolution adopted by the government is an important step toward a systemic approach to determining whether ARMA can manage a given asset effectively. It closes one of the key gaps in the ARMA reform’s secondary legislation by formalizing a procedure for identification that previously either did not exist at all or existed only in fragmentary form.

To prevent problems in law enforcement practice, the following recommendations should be considered alongside ongoing systemic monitoring of how the secondary legislation is being implemented.

1. The Criminal Procedure Code needs to be brought into line with the new model of interaction between prosecutors and ARMA. This requires amending Articles 100 and 175 of the CPC, specifically:

• aligning the list of grounds in Article 100(6) for transferring physical evidence into ARMA’s management (and for its disposal) with the provisions of the ARMA Law;
• moving to Article 175 of the CPC the requirement that a prosecutor send ARMA a copy of the seizure ruling and a request on the feasibility of transferring the asset into management no later than the next business day after the ruling is issued — together with requirements for the content of the request and the list of documents to be attached;
• establishing in Article 175 an obligation for the prosecutor to petition the investigating judge (or court) to transfer property into ARMA’s management no later than three days after receiving a positive conclusion, provided the owner has not given written consent;
• establishing an obligation for the prosecutor to petition the investigating judge or court to change the management approach or take other measures, within no more than five business days of receiving information from ARMA about circumstances that make it impossible to preserve the asset’s economic value. 

2. Regulate the consequences of a negative ARMA conclusion. Either a separate instrument or amendments to existing regulation should define what a prosecutor is to do after receiving a negative conclusion, and whether a repeat request is possible once the grounds for refusal have been addressed.

 

3. ARMA should develop internal operating procedures (a standard operating procedure) for staff at its central office and Interregional Territorial Departments, setting out in chronological order all actions relating to seized assets, with references to the specific regulatory provisions involved. Such a document would remove operational uncertainty and minimize the risk of inconsistent interpretation of similar situations.

How do things stand now?

Most articles in the CPC section devoted to international cooperation have not been amended since the Code was adopted in 2012. At that time, digitalization was not a global priority, and the practice of international cooperation had not become widespread enough to reveal the weaknesses in its legal regulation. 

As a result, the provisions currently in force lag in many respects behind technological progress and the new legal approaches to mutual legal assistance — particularly when it comes to confiscating assets located in foreign states and dealing with participants in criminal proceedings who are abroad.

The exchange of materials in international cooperation. Current legislation permits requests and case materials to be exchanged in paper form during international cooperation. This significantly slows down Ukraine’s interaction with partner states in the fight against crime, since it requires a considerable amount of time.

The protection of information in international cooperation. Information processed within such cooperation currently has no clear safeguards against disclosure — especially where the cooperation does not require opening criminal proceedings in Ukraine.

The international wanted list. The CPC does not expressly define the moment from which a person is considered to be on the international wanted list.

The enforcement of HACC judgments. Although the HACC hears high-level corruption cases as a specialized court, certain matters arising in the enforcement of its judgments — such as a convicted person’s parole or the replacement of the unserved part of a sentence with a more lenient one — still go before local courts under the rules of Article 539 of the CPC, rather than before the HACC.

The confiscation and special confiscation of property abroad. The CPC does not contain a sufficiently detailed mechanism for establishing the location abroad of property subject to confiscation or special confiscation. The engagement of ARMA to trace and seize property abroad when enforcing confiscation decisions is also currently unregulated.

Questioning from abroad. Witnesses or victims located abroad can be questioned only from the premises of a court at their place of residence, which means that a corresponding request must be sent each time to the competent authorities of the foreign state through mutual legal assistance. Only for the duration of martial law or a state of emergency has it become possible to question a witness or victim directly by videoconference from any location.

What does the draft law propose?

Draft Law No. 14292 proposes a fairly broad package of changes. Among the key positive updates:

• permission to make wider use of electronic communications for international cooperation requests;
• regulation of the protection of information and materials in international cooperation;
• a more detailed set of grounds for refusing or postponing mutual legal assistance requests, and of the procedure for executing them;
• improvement of the procedure for recognizing and enforcing judgments, as well as for confiscating property abroad;
• the introduction of the ability to question persons located abroad by videoconference or from the premises of a Ukrainian diplomatic mission, regardless of whether martial law or a state of emergency has been declared in the country.

Which provisions need refining?

Despite its generally positive thrust, the document contains a number of procedural gaps, legal ambiguities, and risks that could negate the intended effect in practice.

For the mechanisms it establishes to work smoothly, the document should be refined in the respects described below.

Confiscation of property abroad: the right direction, but a weak procedural design

The amendments to Articles 535 and 568 of the CPC are intended to ensure the enforcement of judgments insofar as they concern the confiscation or special confiscation of property located abroad. This is an important step, particularly in countering organized crime, and corruption in particular. There are two problematic points whose resolution could improve this process.

In the proposed wording of Article 535(7) of the CPC, the drafters would require the court to draw up a petition for the recognition and enforcement, in a foreign state, of a Ukrainian court’s conviction insofar as it concerns the confiscation or special confiscation of property. However, the drafters failed to take into account that special confiscation may be imposed not only by a court’s verdict but also, under Article 96-1(2) and (3) of the CC, by rulings on release from criminal liability, on the closure of criminal proceedings, on extended confiscation, on the imposition of coercive measures of a medical or educational nature, and on the imposition of criminal-law measures on a legal entity. The aforementioned provision of Article 535(7) of the CPC should therefore also include a reference to the rulings listed in Article 96-1(2) of the CC.

In addition, the draft law would require those enforcing the judgment (chiefly the State Enforcement Service) to notify the court of any property discovered abroad that is subject to confiscation or special confiscation.

This innovation is consistent with EU Directive 2024/1260, under which the tracing and identification of property subject to freezing and confiscation must be possible even after a final court decision. Yet, although the draft law offers such an option, the point at which criminal property — or property subject to confiscation — is discovered should not be deferred all the way until the court’s final decision. 

The reason is that state enforcement officers cannot match law enforcement agencies or ARMA in detecting and tracing property, especially abroad — they lack sufficient powers and resources for this. 

As noted earlier, it is law enforcement agencies during the pre-trial investigation, and ARMA, that have the most tools for tracing and identifying assets subject to confiscation. Even they, however, do so fairly rarely, and the reason is that Article 91 of the current CPC in no way requires the location of property subject to confiscation or special confiscation to be proved within criminal proceedings. Largely because of this, in most cases such property ultimately goes unnoticed by the enforcement service.

Therefore, to adapt the provisions of EU Directive 2024/1260 to Ukrainian realities, it would be sensible, first, to supplement Article 91 of the CPC with provisions requiring the prosecution to prove the location of assets subject to confiscation or special confiscation. Second, to establish that, when enforcing court decisions on confiscation for the laundering of criminal property or for corruption, ARMA may be engaged to identify property that may be confiscated. Article 535(7) of the CPC should also include a reference to the rulings listed in Article 96-1(2) of the CC.

2. The international wanted list, the digitalization of summonses, and the removal of procedural obstacles for persons abroad

One of the draft law’s provisions concerns placing a suspect on the international wanted list. In Article 291 of the CPC, the drafters propose to draw a clear distinction between a domestic search within Ukraine and an international one, and to establish that a suspect is deemed wanted precisely from the moment the investigator or prosecutor issues a decision to that effect.

This will help settle long-standing debates about the moment from which a person is considered placed on the international wanted list and will allow courts to follow a single line of application. 

At the same time, the amendments to this article will not resolve another, more acute problem. It concerns cases where suspects or the defendants are abroad and the defense, invoking Article 135(7) of the CPC, argues that they may be reached solely through the diplomatic-channel procedure. Currently, under this provision, a summons for a person residing abroad is served through international cooperation mechanisms.

HACC case law reasonably explains that a person’s mere presence abroad does not require summoning them through diplomatic channels, since such channels should be used only if the person has formally arranged permanent residence, registered with a consulate, deregistered their residence, and the like. If no such facts are established during the criminal proceedings, the person is summoned in the ordinary manner.

 Even so, the debate over this issue continues, owing to lawyers’ inconsistent reading of the said Article 135(7) of the CPC. This is precisely why the measure under the State Anti-Corruption Program to simplify the procedure for summoning, in criminal proceedings, persons who reside abroad and are citizens of Ukraine has not yet been implemented.

It would therefore be best to specify clearly in Article 135(7) of the CPC that a person located abroad may also be summoned through electronic means of communication — official email addresses, messengers, and social media (provided that the person’s use of them is documented).

3. Matters concerning the enforcement of HACC judgments should remain within that court’s jurisdiction 

The draft law also proposes amendments to Article 539 of the CPC. In this article, the drafters seek to clarify that the question of parole, or of replacing the unserved part of the sentence of a convicted person who has been transferred to serve their sentence abroad, is decided by the Ukrainian court that delivered the verdict. 

This provision carries no risks; however, while amending this article of the CPC, the legislator could also resolve the problem of matters relating to the enforcement of HACC judgments being decided by courts other than the HACC. Thus, by amending Article 539 of the CPC, the legislator could solve two problems at once.

The HACC has special subject-matter jurisdiction over corruption-related criminal proceedings. Yet most matters relating to the enforcement of its judgments are decided by local courts — in particular, at the person’s place of serving the sentence or place of residence. 

Local courts are entitled to grant parole to persons convicted by HACC judgments, to substitute their punishment, and to release them from it altogether. Such situations are not uncommon. For example, in 2024 the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv granted parole to a person convicted by the HACC — an accomplice in the bribery case involving the director of the Rzhyshchiv Military Forestry State Enterprise — so that he could serve in the military. And in 2025 the Voznesensk City-District Court released from punishment the head of a private company who had been convicted of misappropriating UAH 787 million of an NBU loan and of participating in the Yanukovych–Kurchenko criminal organization.

Matters relating to the enforcement of HACC judgments should be decided by that very court, since they can substantially affect the actual extent of the punishment imposed on those convicted of corruption-related criminal offenses — and therefore its deterrent, punitive, and rehabilitative effect.

Article 539 of the CPC should therefore be supplemented with a separate clause under which matters relating to the enforcement of a HACC judgment will be decided by the HACC alone. 

4. Eliminating the risks associated with the extradition procedure 

The draft law’s amendments also touch on extradition. The drafters spell out the procedure for submitting extradition requests, the handling of situations where several states request a person’s extradition, the application of preventive measures to such persons, and so on. Some of the proposed innovations require clarification.

The draft law adds to Article 575 of the CPC a mechanism for confirming that an extradition request remains valid. Under it, the court must respond to the Ministry of Justice on whether the request remains valid, and a failure to provide such a response becomes grounds for withdrawing it. Yet the drafters set no deadline at all for providing this response.

This creates a risk that, because the response deadline is undefined, the Ministry of Justice may mistakenly treat such an extradition request as withdrawn — even though the court has provided no response at all.

It is therefore important to add to the new Article 575(7) and (8) of the CPC clear deadlines for the court’s response, and to provide that it is a negative response from the court — not the absence of one — that constitutes grounds for withdrawing such a request.

In addition, to align the rules on simultaneous requests for a person’s surrender, the new clause 5-2 of Article 589(1) of the CPC should be supplemented with a further ground for refusing extradition: the surrender of the extradited person to one of the requesting states.

Thus it is necessary, first, to add to the proposed Article 575(7) and (8) of the CPC clear deadlines for courts to respond to the Ministry of Justice, and to provide that it is a negative response from the courts — not the absence of one — that constitutes grounds for withdrawing an extradition request. Second, the new clause 5-2 of Article 589(1) of the CPC should be supplemented with the following ground for refusing extradition: the surrender of the extradited person to one of the requesting states.

Conclusions

Transparency International Ukraine recommends adopting Draft Law No. 14292 in the first reading as a basis, with refinement ahead of the second reading, since adopting it in its current wording would leave gaps that would diminish the effect of the changes made.

In our view, the following recommendations should be taken into account during this refinement:

• Supplement Article 91 of the CPC with provisions requiring the prosecution to prove the location of assets subject to confiscation or special confiscation. 
• Establish that state enforcement officers may engage ARMA to identify property that may be confiscated when enforcing judgments or rulings for the laundering of criminal property (Article 209 of the CC) or for corruption (Note 1 to Article 45 of the CC). 
• Add to Article 535(7) of the CPC a reference to the rulings listed in Article 96-1(2) of the CC.
• Specify clearly in Article 135(7) of the CPC that a person located abroad may also be summoned through electronic means of communication — official email addresses, messengers, and social media (provided that the person’s use of them is documented).
• Add to Article 539 of the CPC a separate clause under which matters relating to the enforcement of a HACC judgment will be decided by the HACC alone. 
• Add to the proposed Article 575(7) and (8) of the CPC clear deadlines for courts to respond to the Ministry of Justice, and provide that it is a negative response from the courts — not the absence of one — that will constitute grounds for withdrawing an extradition request. 
• Supplement the new clause 5-2 of Article 589(1) of the CPC with the following ground for refusing extradition: the surrender of the extradited person to one of the requesting states.

Brief conclusions and proposals

The draft new Civil Code of Ukraine represents an attempt to adapt private law to contemporary social challenges, particularly the development of digital technologies, electronic communications, and the circulation of information. However, certain provisions of the draft pose direct risks to access to information, freedom of speech, and the protection of public assets.

These provisions should be refined before the draft CC is considered in the second reading. We recommend that parliament:

• in Article 328, remove the possibility of removing, anonymizing, destroying, or deindexing information about a person from publicly available sources on the grounds that it is “outdated,” “incomplete,” or has “lost public interest”;
• clarify the provisions of Article 353 regarding the processing of data on a legal entity’s digital image without its consent in cases where such information is open under the law;
• reconsider the advisability of introducing good morals as a separate source for regulating civil relations, given the existence of already established and settled means of legal regulation (law, contract, custom);
• reconsider the advisability of restricting the state and territorial communities in reclaiming property from bona fide acquirers;
• supplement Article 367 with a restriction on reclaiming from a bona fide acquirer property obtained through the disposal of assets in respect of which a court decision has been issued applying the sanction provided for in Article 4(1)(1-1) of the Law of Ukraine on Sanctions.

The current situation 

In the area of access to information, the Civil Code of Ukraine primarily regulates the personal non-property rights of individuals and legal entities. Articles 200, 277, and 302 of the Civil Code define information as a distinct intangible good and enshrine a person’s right to information, as well as mechanisms for protection against the dissemination of false information. The Code grants every individual the right to protect their personal non-property rights against unlawful encroachment by others. If false information is disseminated about a person or members of their family, the individual has the right to a reply and to the refutation of such information. At the same time, current legislation does not establish a general obligation to remove or anonymize such information — except where a document is withdrawn by the legal entity that issued or adopted it. 

As for legal entities, the Civil Code likewise vests them with a number of personal non-property rights, in particular the right to the inviolability of business reputation, the privacy of correspondence, and information. However, the scope of such rights is narrower than that of individuals.

The Civil Code of Ukraine was formed at a time when digital platforms, search engines, large arrays of personal data, and the algorithmic processing of information did not yet play such a significant role in social life. As a result, the Code essentially contains no separate regulation of digital privacy, the right to control one’s own digital data, mechanisms for deindexing information in search engines, or guarantees regarding the processing of personal data. The existing rules on the protection of private life and information are general in nature and are largely designed for traditional forms of disseminating information rather than the modern digital environment. 

Issues of transparency and openness of information are regulated largely not by the Civil Code itself but by special legislation — in particular, the Laws of Ukraine on Information, on Public Electronic Registers, on State Registration of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs, and Civic Formations, and on Corruption Prevention. These and other acts define the openness regimes for state registers, access to information about individuals and legal entities, the use of budget funds, declarations, court decisions, and the like. If information is defined by law as open and subject to publication, it may be collected, analyzed, and used, provided this does not violate special restrictions on personal data or restricted-access information. 

As regards the disposal of state and municipal property, the current Civil Code sets out the general principles of the right of ownership, the legal status of state and municipal property, and the powers of the state and territorial communities as participants in civil relations. In particular, Articles 316–327 of the Civil Code enshrine the content of the right of ownership, the forms of ownership, and the specifics of exercising the right of state and municipal ownership. The Code proceeds from the premise that the state and territorial communities exercise the right of ownership through authorized bodies, and that the disposal of public assets must be carried out within the bounds of the law and in accordance with the public interest. 

The Code pays particular attention to protecting the right of ownership. Article 386 guarantees that the state ensures equal protection of the rights of all owners. At the same time, Article 388, which concerns an owner’s right to reclaim property from a bona fide acquirer, reveals an imbalance between protecting private property and the interests of the state and territorial communities in preserving public assets. Thus, the state or communities cannot reclaim their immovable property from a bona fide acquirer (a person who did not know and could not have known about the unlawful origin of the asset) if more than ten years have passed since the registration of the first acquirer’s ownership of the property, or since the date the property was transferred into their ownership (if it is not subject to registration).

What is proposed

The draft CC substantially expands the existing restrictions on the use of data and information about an individual, particularly in the digital environment. Unlike the current Code, which mostly operates with traditional categories of privacy and the protection of private life, the draft seeks to account for the development of social networks, messengers, and artificial intelligence technologies.

In particular, with a person’s consent, the use of their image and voice is permitted (Article 318), as is the creation of digital content that realistically imitates the image, voice, behavior, or other distinctive features of a specific individual, including through the use of artificial intelligence technologies (Article 321). Moreover, the use of content created with artificial intelligence technologies must be accompanied by clear and visible labeling of its synthetic origin. 

A novelty is the introduction of the rights of individuals and legal entities to a digital image and a digital personal space (digital privacy). A digital image encompasses any forms of representing and distinguishing a person in the digital environment — such as accounts, profiles, personal pages, personal data, avatars, and digital profiles, including in social networks and e-government systems, as well as images, video recordings, audio recordings, electronic signatures and seals, and the like. Copying, using, and processing data on a person’s digital image is possible only with their consent. 

In addition, the draft establishes restrictions on the publication and dissemination of personal digital information — in particular, email messages, telephone conversations and messages, electronic text and voice messages, images, and audio and video communication in messengers and social networks (Article 333), as well as personal notes in electronic form (Article 332) — permitting such use only with the person’s consent. 

Another novelty of the draft CC is the right to be forgotten. Under it, any individual may demand the removal, anonymization, or destruction of information about themselves from publicly available sources, and the cessation of the provision of links (deindexing) to such information under their name, if the information is false, outdated, incomplete, processed unlawfully, or has lost public interest, and its further processing harms that person’s personal rights. 

However, an individual’s right to be forgotten cannot be applied where the personal data: 

• is necessary for exercising the right to freedom of thought and speech and the free expression of one’s views and beliefs; 
• has archival and/or cultural value or forms part of historical, scientific, or statistical research; 
• relates to an official, civil servant, or other public figure and is connected with the performance of their official, professional, or public functions;
• is necessary for protecting the health of the public and of individuals; 
• is necessary for the data controller to fulfill a legally defined obligation to process such personal data. 

As for the protection of state and municipal property, the draft CC retains and elaborates the existing restriction on the ability of the state or territorial communities to recover property that has unlawfully left their ownership if ten years have passed since a bona fide acquirer obtained it.

In addition, the draft retains a special approach to determining when the limitation period begins to run in disputes over reclaiming property transferred from state or municipal into private ownership. Such a period is proposed to be calculated from the date of state registration of the first acquirer’s ownership, or from the moment the property is transferred to them if it is not subject to state registration.

Risks

1. The right to be forgotten

The problem with the right-to-be-forgotten concept proposed in Article 328 of the draft CC lies primarily in the fact that certain criteria for its application are formulated too broadly and are evaluative in nature. This concerns categories such as “incomplete information,” “outdated information,” or “information that has lost public interest,” the content of which has no clear statutory limits and may be interpreted arbitrarily.

In the absence of clear criteria for balancing a person’s right to privacy against the public interest in access to information, there is a risk that the right to be forgotten could become a tool for concealing socially important information. In particular, such mechanisms could potentially be used by bad-faith actors to delete, deindex, or restrict access to information in the media, journalistic investigations, and open data portals.

Formally, the right to be forgotten will not be absolute and will not provide for the automatic deletion of information; however, the proposed safeguards may prove insufficient. In particular, a person may lose the status of an official, civil servant, or public figure, but the public interest in information about corruption, reputational scandals, or other facts concerning that person will persist. 

As a result, journalists, open data aggregators, and even social network users will be forced to prove in court the existence of public interest in information about former officials, corrupt actors, or other persons. This will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech, as the media and the public will avoid disseminating or retaining such information for fear of litigation. 

A separate risk is that case law on such provisions will develop gradually and may be unpredictable. Until it becomes settled, the existence of such a rule may be used as a tool of pressure against journalists, civil society organizations, whistleblowers, analytical platforms, and other actors who work with open data. 

Clearly, the so-called “right to be forgotten” is an attempt by the authors to reproduce in the draft CC the right to erasure (“the right to be forgotten”) provided for in EU Regulation 2016/679 on the protection of personal data (the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR). However, in implementing this approach, they did not take into account that, under Article 17(3)(d) of the relevant EU Regulation, the use of personal data to achieve public-interest purposes is a limitation on the erasure of data rather than a ground for such a request. 

Therefore, in preparing for the second reading, it is advisable to revise the provisions of Article 328 and remove the possibility of removing, anonymizing, destroying, or deindexing information about a person from publicly available sources on the grounds that it is “outdated,” “incomplete,” or has “lost public interest,” since such criteria are evaluative and create risks of restricting access to socially important information. Instead, the right to be forgotten should be limited to cases where the information about a person is false or has been processed unlawfully. 

2. The digital privacy of legal entities

Articles 345 and 353 of the draft CC vest legal entities with rights to a digital image and a digital personal space (digital privacy). A digital image encompasses any forms of representation in the digital environment — such as accounts, profiles, personal pages, and digital profiles, including in social networks and e-government systems, as well as electronic signatures, seals, and other forms of individualization in the digital environment. Copying, using, and processing data on a legal entity’s digital image is possible only with its consent. 

The proposed regulation gives rise to contradictions regarding its relationship with the principles of openness of public information, the functioning of state registers, journalistic activity, and the activity of services that aggregate open data. In particular, the broad and evaluative definition of a digital image could potentially cover a significant body of information that is already open under the law — including information about beneficial owners, data on participation in public procurement, court proceedings, and the use of budget funds. There is a risk that such rules could be used to restrict access to socially important information or create additional legal risks for journalists, civil society organizations, and analytical platforms that work with open data.

Moreover, the concept of digital privacy is by its nature primarily linked to protecting the private life and personal data of an individual. For legal entities, by contrast, there may be separate digital non-property rights related to protecting business reputation, trade secrets, electronic communications, or means of electronic identification. For this reason, the draft’s effective extension of the full construct of “digital privacy” to legal entities appears questionable. 

In this context, it can be considered well-founded to clarify the provisions of Article 353 regarding the processing of data on a legal entity’s digital image without obtaining its consent in cases where such information is open under the law. 

3. Applying good morals as a source for regulating civil relations

Alongside law, contract, and custom, the draft CC singles out another means of regulating private relations — good morals, by which it proposes to mean the body of moral norms and principles, standards of ethical conduct, and generally accepted notions of proper behavior that are established in society.

Good morals would directly affect key areas of private relations. In particular, the content of a contract may not contradict good morals; otherwise, a court may declare the contract invalid. An individual will be able to freely choose the forms and ways of expressing their individuality, determine their own conduct, and make decisions only in ways and within limits that, among other things, do not contradict good morals. In addition, when exercising the right of ownership and performing the related obligations, an owner will also be required to comply with the requirements of good morals. 

Introducing such a category effectively means that the regulation of civil relations may be influenced not only by statutory rules but also by rather subjective ideas about morality, ethics, or “proper” behavior. At the same time, the use of such a broad and indeterminate category raises concerns from the standpoint of the principle of legal certainty, since the boundaries of the concept of “good morals” remain unclear and may differ substantially depending on the social context, subjective perception, or case law. In the absence of clear criteria for its application, this may also create risks of a selective or discriminatory approach in assessing the conduct of participants in civil-law relations. 

In view of this, it is advisable to reconsider the appropriateness of applying good morals as a separate source for regulating civil relations, given the existence of already established and settled means of legal regulation — law, contract, and custom.

4. The specifics of reclaiming state and municipal property from a bona fide acquirer

The draft Civil Code enshrines the existing restriction on the ability of the state or territorial communities to recover property that has unlawfully left their ownership if 10 years have passed since its sale to a bona fide acquirer. This restriction effectively legalizes the unlawful alienation of state or community property through fraudulent schemes and abuses by officials. 

Setting time limits for reclaiming property may lead the state and the relevant territorial communities to lose assets that unlawfully left their ownership through fraudulent schemes, abuse of office by officials, or other unlawful acts, as it will limit the ability to recover them, even through the courts. Moreover, the provided list of exceptions to which the restrictions do not apply (critical infrastructure facilities, cultural heritage, and the nature reserve fund) is too narrow and does not account for other objects — for example, forestry land or coastal land around rivers and water bodies, which traditionally attract heightened interest from developers.

Even greater harm to the protection of the property interests of the state and communities comes from the change in the approach to calculating when the limitation period begins to run for filing a court claim to reclaim property. Instead of applying the general approach — under which the limitation period begins on the day the person learned or could have learned of the violation of their right — the start of this period is set at the date of state registration of ownership or of the transfer of the property to the bona fide acquirer. And since a party’s filing of a statement with the court on the expiry of the limitation period is grounds for dismissing the claim, in practice the state or community will have not 10 but only 3 years to recover unlawfully alienated property.

The change in the approach to when the limitation period begins to run in this category of cases may also contribute to a rise in the number of unlawful schemes for alienating others’ property in the future, since after ownership is re-registered, time will work against the lawful owner. It is effectively presumed that the state or community is aware of the change in ownership of the property from the moment the corresponding entry is made in the state register. This approach does not account for the real circumstances in which violations are discovered, which often become known only after a considerable time — in particular, following an audit, a journalistic investigation, criminal proceedings, or a change in the leadership of a government body. 

In addition, instead of placing the obligation to compensate the value of the property on the person guilty of its unlawful alienation, the current Code and the draft CC effectively oblige the owner (the state or community) to buy back its own property, and only then resolve the dispute with the guilty person.

This approach is also risky in view of the need to incur budget expenditures, as it imposes an additional financial burden that may be especially significant for local budgets. They may not provide for such planned expenditures at all, yet if funds are not deposited into the court’s account, the court will be unable to rule on the return of the property. Moreover, a bona fide acquirer may have purchased the property at an understated price, whereas the state or community would need to compensate its market value. 

In March last year, TI Ukraine called for vetoing Draft Law No. 12089, which was similar in content, but it ultimately entered into force. Therefore, before the second reading, it is necessary to reconsider the advisability of retaining the restrictions on the state and territorial communities in reclaiming property from bona fide acquirers.

5. Establishing additional guarantees for purchasers of sanctioned assets

In our study on the disposal of confiscated Russian assets, we highlighted the problem of investors’ reluctance to take part in auctions to acquire such property due to distrust of its background, which is associated with the risks of challenges by former owners. Potential buyers need additional guarantees from the state so that, whatever happens, they will not be left without the property. At present, legislation provides them with only one type of guarantee — the restriction on a previous owner’s recovery of property sold to a bona fide acquirer through privatization at an electronic auction, provided for in Article 388 of the Civil Code.

But part of the assets, in particular residential housing, were sold by the State Property Fund at electronic auctions under a procedure for alienating objects of state property other than privatization. Furthermore, in January 2026 the government approved a new, separate procedure for disposing of sanctioned assets. As a result, the guarantees for bona fide acquirers will not extend to property sold under these procedures. 

Consequently, a need arose to expand such guarantees. In January 2025, parliament adopted amendments to the Civil Code of Ukraine providing for a restriction on reclaiming property from a bona fide acquirer if they obtained it through an electronic auction. But they did not take effect because of technical and legal inconsistencies between the existing and the adopted provision. Nor did such a provision appear in the draft Civil Code.

In view of this, it is advisable to provide for appropriate guarantees by restricting the possibility of reclaiming from a bona fide acquirer property obtained through the disposal of assets in respect of which a court decision has been issued applying the sanction provided for in Article 4(1)(1-1) of the Law of Ukraine on Sanctions.

Conclusions and recommendations

The draft new Civil Code of Ukraine represents an attempt to adapt private law to contemporary social challenges, particularly the development of digital technologies, electronic communications, and the circulation of information. However, certain provisions of the draft pose direct risks to access to information, freedom of speech, and the protection of public assets.

In particular, the provisions on the right to be forgotten and the digital privacy of legal entities, in their proposed form, may create preconditions for restricting access to socially important information and complicating the work of journalists, civil society organizations, and services that work with open data. Evaluative criteria such as the “outdatedness” of information or the “loss of public interest” have no clear limits and may be applied arbitrarily, which creates risks of abuse and a chilling effect on freedom of speech, as the media and the public will avoid disseminating or retaining such information for fear of potential litigation.

Concern is also raised by the introduction of good morals as a separate source for regulating civil relations. Granting moral and ethical categories independent regulatory significance may expand the scope for subjective interpretation and the inconsistent application of rules, which potentially contradicts the principle of legal certainty and creates risks of a selective or discriminatory approach in law enforcement. 

The provisions on reclaiming state and municipal property from a bona fide acquirer require particular attention. The proposed approach effectively narrows the ability of the state and territorial communities to recover assets unlawfully alienated through fraudulent schemes or abuses, and also creates additional financial risks for budgets due to the need to compensate the value of the property to the bona fide acquirer in advance. 

The draft does not eliminate the problem of insufficient guarantees for purchasers of sanctioned assets, which could improve the effectiveness of their disposal. 

These provisions should be refined before the draft CC is considered in the second reading. We therefore recommend that parliament:

• in Article 328, remove the possibility of removing, anonymizing, destroying, or deindexing information about a person from publicly available sources on the grounds that it is “outdated,” “incomplete,” or has “lost public interest”;
• clarify the provisions of Article 353 regarding the processing of data on a legal entity’s digital image without its consent in cases where such information is open under the law;
• reconsider the advisability of introducing good morals as a separate source for regulating civil relations, given the existence of already established and settled means of legal regulation (law, contract, custom);
• reconsider the advisability of retaining the restrictions on the state and territorial communities in reclaiming property from bona fide acquirers;
• supplement Article 367 with a restriction on reclaiming from a bona fide acquirer property obtained through the disposal of assets in respect of which a court decision has been issued applying the sanction provided for in Article 4(1)(1-1) of the Law of Ukraine on Sanctions.

Why the Strategy must be adopted without delay

The Anti-Corruption Strategy is the highest-level policy document setting state anti-corruption priorities for five years. On its basis, the government must, within six months of the law taking effect, approve the State Anti-Corruption Program (SAP) — an operational plan with specific measures, deadlines, and responsible parties.

This is Ukraine’s third Strategy. The first covered 2014–2017 and focused on building anti-corruption institutions. After it expired, Ukraine spent five years without a strategic document; the next was adopted only in June 2022, effectively under EU pressure ahead of candidate status. That strategy was largely declarative and did not reflect the realities of the full-scale invasion. The new 2026–2030 Strategy is far more detailed, covers more areas, and for the first time includes a separate section on recovery. It must also reflect Ukraine’s international commitments across all relevant areas.

Adopting the Strategy is itself an international commitment — required by the Ukraine Facility plan, the Rule of Law Roadmap, and the Kachka-Kos plan. The Ukraine Facility deadline for adopting the relevant law is the end of June 2026.

TI Ukraine took part in preparing the Strategy: our DOZORRO experts worked directly on the public procurement subsection and joined discussions on the others, providing written comments. We previously published a detailed analysis of the NACP Strategy text following public consultations.

That said, some of our comments on criminal justice in that analysis were also incorporated by the Agency into the version sent to the government for approval in early April and registered as a draft law by Anastasiia Radina. Notably, this version also provides for repealing the Lozovyi amendments.

What changed in the government’s version

Neither competing draft law is perfect, and several provisions in both could be refined. Still, the bill registered by the Committee Chair is currently the most ambitious version. The government, by contrast, dropped a number of important reforms, weakening the Strategy. Let us examine the government’s cuts in detail.

Competitive appointment of the Prosecutor General. The most significant difference is in the Prosecution Service subsection (2.2). The Committee Chair’s version lists eight problems; the government’s, seven. The government removed Problem 2.2.2, which provided for:

• appointing the Prosecutor General through a selection commission that recommends candidates to the President; 
• defining in law the grounds for a vote of no confidence in, and dismissal of, the Prosecutor General.

The Kachka-Kos plan envisages a comprehensive overhaul of the Prosecutor General’s selection and dismissal procedure to align it with best European practice, with input from the Venice Commission. This reform scored 0 out of 10 in the expert coalition’s monitoring, as no steps have been taken since December 2025. In the government’s draft law, the problem is not merely deferred to the SAP but removed entirely.

Reform of the SBI Director selection. In the Committee Chair’s version, Problem 2.2.7 covers the selection of the heads of the National Police and the State Bureau of Investigation — with a specific outcome on improving the SBI Director selection procedure in line with European Commission recommendations. 

In the government’s version, Problem 2.2.6 covers only the selection of the National Police leadership; a competition for the SBI head is absent. Yet SBI reform is also part of the Kachka-Kos plan and scored 1 out of 10 in the expert coalition’s monitoring.

Narrowing the SAPO Head’s powers. In the Committee Chair’s Strategy, point 1.10.3.1 granted the SAPO Head four categories of powers:

1. a) entering information on MPs into the URPTI and approving motions heard by an investigating judge; b) independently sending extradition requests and forming joint investigation teams; c) extending pre-trial investigation deadlines; d) carrying out any investigative and procedural actions in NABU proceedings without involving the Prosecutor General.

The government’s version keeps only (b) and (c). The removed points — (a) and (d) — are precisely those that most reduce SAPO’s dependence on the Prosecutor General and limit political influence over investigations. Requiring SAPO to clear procedural actions with the Prosecutor General is a structural vulnerability that allows investigations to be blocked or slowed through administrative tools.

Detail on NACP salaries. In the Committee Chair’s version, point 1.10.1.1 contains specific wording: to define in law the size and structure of salaries for all categories of NACP staff to ensure transparency and minimize the variable component. The government’s version retains only the general “proper legal regulation of financial provision,” without detail on pay structure. This change is not critical, since the requirement to set NACP staff salaries in the dedicated law is better placed in the SAP. 

What remained unchanged

Most of the Strategy’s text is identical in both versions. Both retain: autonomous wiretapping for the NABU, abolition of the automatic closure of criminal cases upon expiry of the statute of limitations, selection to the HQCJ and HCJ with international experts holding a decisive vote, and whistleblower protection under EU Directive 2019/1937.

Yet one of the weakest sections in both Strategies is the subsection on asset declaration, which omits most of Ukraine’s international commitments in this area — in particular, on the ineffectiveness of automated checks and the need to revisit the risk-based approach. The current financial control system cannot effectively prevent top-level corruption specifically, and this must be fixed.

Conclusions and recommendations

The comparative analysis shows that the government used the month-long delay not to improve the document but to weaken three provisions directly tied to the Kachka-Kos plan priorities.

These and other shortcomings must be corrected when the relevant law is adopted.

• The version developed by the NACP and registered by the Anti-Corruption Committee Chair is more ambitious and more fully reflects Ukraine’s international commitments. In any case, between the first and second readings the committee will be able to consider amendments from all entities with the right of legislative initiative, including the government.
• Removing points (a) and (d) from point 1.10.3.1 on the SAPO Head’s powers directly affects the operational independence of the anti-corruption prosecution. These provisions must appear in the final text of the Strategy.
• Regardless of which version parliament adopts as the basis, several provisions should be strengthened between readings — above all, the effectiveness of countering money laundering and the approaches to assessing e-declaration. Here, the NACP should focus on the quality of full checks, not merely the number of automated ones.

Further delay in voting on the Strategy is not an option. The previous cycle showed that late adoption of the Strategy and the SAP renders part of their content obsolete before implementation even begins. It is essential to preserve the document’s ambition and to strengthen it further.

The current situation

Even after the amendments introduced by Law of Ukraine No. 4111-IX of December 4, 2024, several problems remain in current legislation that could hinder the effective prosecution of legal entities.

1. Under Article 96-3(3) of the Criminal Code, which sets out the grounds for applying criminal-law measures to legal entities, a legal entity bears liability after its reorganization only if a natural person was also prosecuted alongside it for bribery (Article 369), trading in influence (Article 369-2), or legalization (laundering) of criminally obtained property (Article 209).
2. A conflict remains between the definition of officials in Article 18(4) (which defines the special subject of a criminal offense) and paragraph 2 of the Note to Article 364 of the Criminal Code (which gives a special definition of an official), because the latter omits any mention of officials of local self-government bodies and municipal enterprises.
3. Ukraine can prosecute corruption offenses only against members of international parliamentary assemblies in which it itself participates. It cannot prosecute members of other assemblies for corruption.
4. Because of an imprecision in Article 309(1)(9-1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, which lists the rulings of an investigating judge that may be appealed, it is currently not expressly permitted to appeal an investigating judge’s ruling that imposes restrictions on a legal entity’s activities.
5. The Law of Ukraine on Corruption Prevention lacks a definition of an authorized person of a legal entity that is harmonized with the Criminal Code.

What does the draft law propose?

The draft law proposes several distinct amendments to the Criminal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, and the Law of Ukraine on Corruption Prevention that would broaden the scope of liability for bribing officials on behalf of and/or in the interests of legal entities, and would clarify certain imprecisions previously left by the legislator.

1. Amendments to Article 96-3(3) of the Criminal Code will prevent legal entities from escaping criminal liability through their reorganization, even where law enforcement has been unable to identify the specific individual responsible for bribery (Article 369), trading in influence (Article 369-2), or legalization (laundering) of criminally obtained property (Article 209).
2. Paragraph 2 of the Note to Article 364 of the Criminal Code would be clarified to add officials of local self-government bodies and municipal enterprises to the list of officials. This would resolve the conflict between paragraph 2 of the Note to Article 364 and Article 18(4), which define this list of officials.
3. The status of an official under Article 18(4) and paragraph 2 of the Note to Article 364 would be extended even to members of international parliamentary assemblies in which Ukraine does not participate. This would make it possible to prosecute those who bribe such foreign (international) officials with whom Ukraine has no direct connection.
4. Article 309(1)(9-1) of the Criminal Procedure Code would be clarified to specify that, at the pretrial investigation stage, what may be appealed are an investigating judge’s rulings granting or denying restrictions on a legal entity’s activities — rather than final decisions imposing temporary restrictions on a legal entity’s activities and/or temporary restrictions on the acquisition of rights and/or benefits. This will fix the imprecision previously left by the legislator.
5. Article 61 of the Law of Ukraine on Corruption Prevention would also add a definition of an authorized person of a legal entity, a concept previously found only in paragraph 1 of the Note to Article 96-3 of the Criminal Code.

Conclusions

We have no substantive objections to the proposals put forward by the authors of presidential Draft Law No. 15056, now before parliament.

However, this draft law could serve as a foundation for a more comprehensive regulation of the procedure for prosecuting legal entities.

TI Ukraine therefore supports the adoption of this draft law, with further refinement to expand the “autonomous” criminal liability of legal entities.

 

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

Identified problems and recommendations

• Dual regulation and unclear delineation

The draft law creates a separate category of “complaints regarding the handling of appeals.” Unlike Article 16 of the current Law on Citizens’ Appeals, the bill sets out no special procedure for handling such complaints. At the same time, Article 21 of the bill provides a mechanism for challenging decisions, actions, or inaction by an entity handling appeals, including challenging a response to an appeal, failure to respond, or failure to process an appeal.

The problem is that a response to an appeal is not a substantive decision. It does not affect a person’s rights, freedoms, legitimate interests, or obligations — so there is nothing to appeal. The guarantees of participation in decision-making, the obligation to justify administrative acts, and the right to effective legal protection are already provided for in the Law on Administrative Procedure. A response under the Law on Appeals should therefore not be subject to challenge. These provisions should be deleted.

In substance, “complaints regarding the handling of appeals” are already subsumed within the general appeals mechanism. Treating them as a separate category is unjustified and risks confusion in practice.

Clear delineation between the Law on Appeals (to be adopted) and the Law on Administrative Procedure (which already governs complaint procedures) is essential — for applicants, public authorities, and the legal system as a whole. The proposed provisions are not warranted and should be removed.

• List of subject entities is inconsistent with the Constitution

The draft law over-extends the range of entities obliged to handle appeals. Article 3 defines the “entity handling an appeal” as a state authority, other state body, Autonomous Republic of Crimea authority, local self-government body, their officials and civil servants, and “other entities within whose competence the issues raised fall.”

This is inconsistent with Article 40 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which clearly defines the addressees of appeals (state authorities, local self-government bodies, and their officials and civil servants). Retaining the current wording risks:

• blurring the boundaries of public accountability
• imposing public-law obligations on private actors without justification
• creating legal uncertainty for applicants as to whether their appeal must be considered and what consequences follow. After all, the bill over-extends the list of entities obliged to handle appeals while leaving the category of “other entities” undefined.

The words “other entities within whose competence the issues raised fall” should either be deleted or replaced with “other entities exercising public administration functions, providing public services, or performing other public tasks.”

• Guarantee of in-person reception

Article 40 of the Constitution of Ukraine guarantees personal reception as a form of direct appeal and an element of the constitutional right to appeal. Under Article 64(2) of the Constitution, this right may not be restricted under any circumstances. Accordingly, Article 17 of the draft law must not permit the cancellation, suspension, or effective replacement of in-person reception with other forms of communication.

Personal reception cannot be substituted. Video conference reception should be treated exclusively as an additional, voluntary option:

• available only at the request of or with the consent of the applicant,
• without depriving them of the right to in-person reception, and
• only where both parties have adequate technical capacity ensuring identification, confidentiality, full recording of the appeal, and equal procedural standing.

To prevent abuse and the de facto narrowing of a constitutional right, the draft law should explicitly require entities handling appeals to provide in-person reception, with remote formats available only as supplementary and voluntary alternatives for the applicant.

• The 15-day fast-track rule Article 16 of the bill reinstates the rule allowing appeals that “require no additional study” to be processed within 15 calendar days. Given the volume of appeals handled by state authorities and local self-government bodies, this provision is unnecessary and, in TI Ukraine’s view, creates grounds for deferring consideration of appeals beyond 15 days rather than ensuring faster processing. 

Conclusion

TI Ukraine welcomes the advancement of Draft Law No. 11082 on Appeals as a necessary and long-overdue step toward modernizing state-citizen interaction mechanisms and aligning national legislation with EU standards.

Adopting the new law is justified given the obsolescence of the 1996 Law on Citizens’ Appeals and the need to clearly delineate its scope from the Law on Administrative Procedure — in line with European Commission recommendations on good governance, legal certainty, and effective legal protection.

At the same time, the draft prepared for the second reading contains systemic flaws that could undermine its positive potential and generate legal uncertainty in practice. In particular:

• the list of entities handling appeals must be brought in line with the Constitution
• “complaints regarding the handling of appeals” must not be defined as a separate category of appeals
• the draft law must explicitly require entities handling appeals to provide in-person reception.

How it used to be

Before Law No. 4503-IX took effect, the procedure for accepting assets was governed solely by the ARMA law, and only in general terms. The old model suffered from a number of problems, such as:

• the absence of a unified mechanism for prior asset identification — the ARMA effectively accepted “whatever was offered” for management, with no opportunity to fully assess whether it could manage the asset effectively;
• vague deadlines for accepting assets, which generated conflicts between prosecutors and ARMA over the moment of actual transfer and the shift of responsibility for the asset’s preservation;
• the absence of a procedure for examining (inspecting) the asset with the participation of the prosecutor or persons authorized by them, which created the risk of accepting assets in poor condition for management without proper documentation.

How it is now

The new Procedure introduces a substantially different model, built on the following key elements.

1. Asset identification as a precondition for acceptance

While the Procedure itself does not regulate identification (which is the subject of a separate secondary act), it does take its results into account. Paragraph 7 of Section I provides that, if the investigating judge’s ruling contains no reference to the transfer of the asset to ARMA management, the Agency conducts the asset’s identification at the prosecutor’s request to determine whether it can be managed effectively.

2. Clear deadlines for processing requests

Deadline	Action
Day of receipt	ARMA notifies the operators of asset registers of the seizure
No later than the next business day	ARMA’s senior management instructs the relevant units to prepare the documentation required to accept the asset for management — depending on its type
No later than the 3rd business day	Where necessary, the Agency notifies the Cabinet of Ministers of circumstances that allow for “exceptional” management of the asset (Article 21-1 of the Law)
No later than the 5th business day	ARMA officials carry out actions aimed at the actual acceptance of the asset depending on its type (inspect the asset, take on the status of account administrator at a depository institution, send payment instruction to a bank, etc.)
No later than the 10th business day	The prosecutor signs the acceptance and transfer certificate (for movable and immovable property, securities, and non-cash funds)
Extension up to 30 business days	Granted where there are obstacles to accessing the asset or its components

These provisions align with the third paragraph of Article 19(1) of the Law, which sets a general 10-day deadline for accepting an asset, with the option of extending it to 30 business days.

3. A differentiated approach based on asset type

For the first time, the Procedure provides detailed regulation of how an asset is accepted for management:

• movable and immovable property — with mandatory examination (inspection) at the asset’s actual location, with the participation of persons proposed by the prosecutor;
• securities — through the appointment of a securities account administrator and engagement with a depository institution;
• non-cash funds — through payment instructions, with the option of placing them on a deposit account;
• cash funds — through the cash desk of a state bank branch;
• bank metals — through an individual safe deposit box at a state bank.

4. Asset examination as a mandatory element

Subparagraph 1 of paragraph 4 of Section II introduces a mandatory procedure for inspecting the asset with the participation of “at least one of the persons proposed by the prosecutor in the request” (an investigator, detective, or specialist). This is a fundamental innovation intended to ensure proper documentation of the asset’s condition at the moment of transfer and to reduce the risk of subsequent disputes between the prosecutor and ARMA over the asset’s condition at the time of acceptance.

5. The option to call in the police

The Procedure expressly grants ARMA Interregional Territorial Department staff the right to call in police officers, under a joint order issued by ARMA and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, “where there are reasonable grounds to believe that there is a threat to the life and health of individuals and to public safety.” This is an important safety safeguard, given that assets are often in the actual possession of suspects or persons linked to them.

What problems may arise?

Overall, the greatest challenges are likely to arise where there are discrepancies between the actual and the legal condition of the seized property. Paragraph 6 of Section I of the Procedure provides that the prosecutor may submit proposals to the draft acceptance and transfer act within four business days, which ARMA must then review within one day. However, the Procedure does not specify what is to be done if ARMA rejects the prosecutor’s proposals. This creates a risk of “endless approvals,” where the 10-day deadline is formally observed, but the actual transfer of the asset drags on through iterative revisions, which is inconsistent with the very nature of seizure.

In addition, the Procedure assumes that an opinion on the feasibility of managing the asset already exists at the time of the prosecutor’s request. Yet it does not address the situation where, during the asset’s examination at its actual location, the property is found to differ substantially from the data on which that opinion was based. 

There is also uncertainty regarding the timing of the actual asset inspection. For example, no rule covers the case where a person proposed by the prosecutor cannot participate within the timeframe set by ARMA, leaving it unclear whether the inspection may proceed in their absence, and if so, on what conditions.

The ARMA accordingly needs to work all of this out in cooperation with the prosecution authorities, and these issues can be effectively resolved by drawing on the general principles of criminal proceedings and the relevant departmental standards. Where needed, the Procedure can be amended to formally regulate ways of overcoming these challenges.

Conclusion

The Procedure for ARMA’s Acceptance of Seized Assets for Management, approved by the joint order of the ARMA and the Prosecutor General’s Office, is a necessary step in implementing Law No. 4503-IX. It closes one of the key gaps in the secondary regulation of the new model for handling seized assets.

At the same time, practice may reveal individual problems that will require amendments to some of its provisions, so the ARMA should monitor this and respond promptly — including by initiating changes to the regulations.

Introduction

In January 2026, the NACP published the draft Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–2030 (hereinafter — the AS, or the Strategy), which the Agency submitted for approval to stakeholder bodies. The new strategic document contains three chapters, rather than the four found in the current Strategy. 

In this iteration, Chapter I covers the general system of corruption prevention and counteraction, while Chapter II addresses corruption prevention in priority sectors. Also, a new final chapter has been introduced, dealing with the regulation of key procedural aspects of implementation, reporting, monitoring, coordination, and effectiveness assessment of the Anti-Corruption Strategy and the State Anti-Corruption Program (SAP) for 2026–2030. This chapter was added after the round of public discussions had concluded and was presented only in the finalized draft, meaning that civil society organizations had no opportunity to comment on it. 

It is also worth noting that, in drafting the new Anti-Corruption Strategy, the NACP engaged external expert groups — an approach that is positive in terms of inclusivity and the overall quality of individual sections. This was likely a contributing factor to the insufficient uniformity across sections, particularly in terms of the level of detail provided. 

TI Ukraine was involved both in drafting certain sections and in discussions of drafts already published by the NACP. In particular, our experts worked directly on the public procurement section, and the analysis below reflects this.

With respect to sections 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.9, and 1.10 of Chapter I, and sections 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.3.2, and 2.5 of Chapter II of the Strategy, TI Ukraine’s experts participated in public discussions of these parts and submitted written comments to the NACP.

It is also important to note that NACP published the relevant supporting materials for all sections, as well as tables indicating whether comments were accepted or rejected. This is a good practice that the Agency applied when preparing the previous Strategy as well. 

We now turn to the sections reviewed by TI Ukraine. 

State Anti-Corruption Policy

Section 1.1, on state anti-corruption policy, addresses the regulation of the preparation and implementation of the AS and SAP for future periods. Compared to the anti-corruption policy section of the current Strategy, the new draft covers a narrower set of problems and strategic results, drawing directly on the experience of preparing and implementing the current anti-corruption policy cycle.

The section’s focus on the development and implementation of the anti-corruption policy cycle is entirely justified. The previous Anti-Corruption Strategy was the first document of its kind and contained, in its anti-corruption policy chapter, broadly framed problems and declaratory expected results — such as a reduction in the general level of public tolerance for corruption in Ukraine. The corresponding section of the new draft AS is free of such superfluous provisions.

That said, the draft has its weaknesses. Section 1.1 frequently proposes that the NACP and other responsible bodies carry out a range of activities that these institutions already perform on a regular basis. Despite this, our comment — that the Strategy should not duplicate activities already required by law — was not accepted. The Agency explained that the Strategy must be aligned with existing legislation to ensure proper implementation by the relevant bodies, and that the document should contain all possible measures for addressing the problems it identifies. This rationale is difficult to accept, since the AS is itself adopted at the level of a law, and its provisions are equally binding as those of sector-specific legislation. There is therefore no need for duplication. 

On the positive side, the NACP accepted our proposal to introduce a “strategic pause” between the end of the 2026–2030 Strategy and SAP and the preparation of the next anti-corruption policy cycle. The Agency also agreed on the need to introduce incentive mechanisms for SAP implementers and to grant the NACP the right to issue binding instructions — both of which should significantly improve the implementation discipline of government bodies.

However, our comment proposing that an acceptable rate of SAP implementation be set at 90% of completed measures — with the remaining 10% either having justifiably lost relevance or being unimplemented for financial reasons — was not reflected in the final draft. This threshold corresponds to OECD requirements. The question of implementation rates is not addressed at all in the current draft AS.

Some of our comments aimed at improving the coordination of AS and SAP implementation were accepted, which is also a positive development. For example, the final draft provides for the possibility of including representatives of the business community, academic community, non-governmental organizations, international technical assistance projects, and international organizations in the Coordination Working Group on Anti-Corruption Policy.

Corruption risk analysis and conflicts of interest

Sections 1.3 through 1.5 of the Strategy — covering anti-corruption programs, authorized units and officers, corruption risk analysis, and conflict of interest monitoring — broadly address most of the relevant issues in these areas. Sections 1.3 and 1.4 attracted fewer critical comments from us than the conflict of interest section, which is also one of the most detailed in Chapter I of the AS. 

The NACP accepted our proposal to review approaches to the remuneration of authorized officers in light of the complexity of their functions, as well as the proposal to explicitly designate the failure to incorporate the results of a previous anti-corruption program as grounds for the NACP to reject a new program.

However, although the section addresses the strengthening of the institutional independence of authorized officers, TI Ukraine’s comments regarding sanctions for the absence of authorized units or officers, as well as for the absence of anti-corruption programs, were not reflected in the Strategy’s expected results. The Agency explained that heads of organizations should themselves be motivated to maintain effective internal anti-corruption policies, and that sanctions would therefore not be effective. 

In our opinion, the existence of sanctions for failing to adopt an anti-corruption program or for not having an authorized anti-corruption officer would nonetheless serve as an additional incentive to comply with legal requirements, since sanctions are designed precisely to motivate those who would not act on their own initiative.

The NACP also did not provide for a more systematic involvement of civil society expert organizations in corruption risk assessments and the preparation of anti-corruption programs.

With respect to the quality of NACP’s and the Ministry of Justice’s anti-corruption assessments, the comment-response table indicates that the Agency intends to implement some of TI Ukraine’s comments at the SAP development stage. However, NACP’s intention to reconsider its discretion in selecting draft regulatory acts for expert review was not clearly reflected. The Agency may yet revise its position during the SAP development stage and incorporate this measure into that document.

On the conflict of interest section, the NACP still has not addressed the most critical comment — namely, that the Agency does not yet apply automated assignment of monitoring cases among its authorized officers, despite this approach having been criticized in the external independent assessment report of NACP’s performance for 2020–2021. The Agency explained that introducing automated assignment for proactive monitoring would artificially limit NACP’s ability to respond independently and swiftly to information appearing in the public domain and would significantly reduce the effectiveness of the proactive oversight mechanism. 

We cannot agree that the effectiveness of monitoring is contingent on the absence of automated assignment. Full declaration reviews can also be triggered by notifications from individuals and legal entities or information from media — and this does not prevent automated assignment from being applied in far more complex verification procedures. 

Moreover, the logic of prioritizing oversight effectiveness over oversight transparency is simply untenable in the context of NACP’s anti-corruption work.

Likewise, despite TI Ukraine’s comment, the NACP retained provision 1.5.3.2, which introduces exceptions to the general prohibition on officials receiving gifts in cases of “difficult life circumstances” (medical treatment, damaged housing). In our view, this creates identifiable risks of abuse. Issues of financial support for officials should instead be resolved through improvements to the social protection system for such persons or through the creation of charitable public fundraising mechanisms.

The NACP also declined to accept TI Ukraine’s position that the introduction of the concept of “perceived conflict of interest” into legislation would be premature, given that problems persist with the interpretation of existing terms. Specifically, despite the definitions of real and potential conflicts of interest established by law, courts have still been unable to develop consistent case law in matters involving violations in this area.

The remaining provisions of the conflict-of-interest section — regarding restrictions related to gifts, corporate ownership, and the combination or concurrent holding of official positions — were, in our opinion, developed to a high standard. The section successfully addresses the issue of disproportionate requirements concerning the mandatory transfer of corporate rights, the need to revisit the prohibition on receiving gifts, and the insufficient regulatory clarity surrounding the rules on combining and concurrently holding positions.

Financial control

Section 1.6 on financial control captures the problem of incomplete coverage of declaration subjects (staff of patronage services, members of local council executive committees, etc.), the excessive burden of completing declarations, ineffective oversight of timely declaration submission, and the insufficient effectiveness of the financial control mechanism as a whole. All of these issues are important for strengthening this mechanism and are consistent with the European Commission’s requirements.

Despite this, Section 1.6 attracted our sharpest criticism. While the NACP does acknowledge the insufficient effectiveness of financial disclosure, it attributes this primarily to inadequate automation and interoperability of registries, as well as legislative shortcomings — whereas civil society and international experts have consistently argued that it is the Agency itself that has built a financial disclosure system that fails to deliver results.

For example, the EU’s latest Enlargement Report on Ukraine calls for a stronger e-declaration system to genuinely and effectively prevent and detect unexplained assets. The Commission stated that the system has practical and legal shortcomings, primarily relating to the automated verification process.

What the NACP needs is not more automation of verifications, but a focus on enhancing the capacity of its authorized officers to conduct full verifications — only a human investigator can carry out a quality investigation of circumstances that appear suspicious. TI Ukraine has on numerous occasions provided the NACP with detailed recommendations for overhauling the financial disclosure system. 

Despite significant resources invested in developing and operating the electronic asset declaration registries, the financial control tools are mostly used to hold officials accountable for fairly minor instances of concealment or inaccurate declarations. Rarely does an e-declaration review escalate into a serious top-level corruption investigation.

Among our proposals, we suggested that the section include a problem statement to the effect that the existing financial disclosure mechanisms at the NACP are ineffective due to the Agency’s limited resources, their suboptimal use, the existence of duplicative functions, and other underperforming elements of the system. Addressing this problem would require a series of legislative amendments, updates to internal regulations, and changes to NACP’s implementation practices. 

The NACP did not agree with our proposals and even signaled an intention to enshrine in law the automation of verifications as a substitute for manual full-review procedures.

Among the comments that were accepted: the abolition of the obligation to submit certain interim disclosures already covered by the annual declaration, and the extension of oversight to officials of state-owned enterprises (with a shareholding above 50%) and members of executive committees.

With this approach — ignoring genuinely important problems in the corruption prevention system in the new AS — we will continue to fail to see any real effect from the Agency’s work for a long time to come, and will instead witness, once again, corruption scandals that could not be prevented. 

Whistleblower protection

The whistleblower protection section attracted almost no critical comments from us. The NACP developed it to a high standard, with an appropriate level of detail for a document of the Anti-Corruption Strategy’s standing. 

This section covers both the need to bring legislation and practice on whistleblower protection into conformity with European standards, and the need to improve the operation of the Unified Whistleblower Reporting Portal and the responsible bodies, as well as to foster a culture of whistleblowing.

To achieve these objectives, the Strategy proposes a set of interrelated measures: bringing national legislation into line with EU Directive 2019/1937 and harmonizing the definition of “whistleblower”; establishing an institutional framework with a designated coordinating body and a network of responsible units within public and private organizations; promoting a culture of whistleblowing and raising employees’ awareness of their rights; modernizing the Unified Whistleblower Reporting Portal through integration with state systems and the introduction of a mobile application; and other critically important steps to improve how the whistleblower institution functions.

The only substantive proposal from TI Ukraine was to clarify the relationship between the statuses of “whistleblower” and “confidential informant” so as to avoid legal confusion. However, given its specific nature, this point is likely to be addressed at the SAP stage.

Comments from another expert organization were also well-taken concerning the absence of adequate tracking of complaints about violations of whistleblowers’ rights and the low number of cases in which rights are actually restored. The number of whistleblowers effectively protected is the real measure of the Agency’s performance in this area, so it is important to keep the focus here. The NACP did not fully incorporate these comments but did take them into account. We hope these observations will be reflected, if not in the final text of the AS, then in the SAP. 

Anti-corruption segment of criminal justice

Sections 1.9 (“Counteracting corruption and corruption-related offenses”) and 1.10 (“Independence, institutional resilience and effectiveness of anti-corruption institutions”) of the draft Anti-Corruption Strategy cover the system of legal liability for corruption and the capacity of anti-corruption bodies to enforce it. Section 1.9 systematically covers the types of liability — from disciplinary measures through civil law instruments to criminal liability. Section 1.10 is structured around four anti-corruption institutions: NACP, NABU, SAPO, and HACC.

Overall, the draft AS in this part demonstrates a high degree of alignment with the European Commission’s technical recommendations: it includes autonomous wiretapping powers for NABU, expanded authority for the SAPO Director, measures to counter the abuse of procedural rights in HACC, and strengthened internal oversight within NABU. The recommendation on the statistical data system (1.9.4.3) was fully incorporated, while the “fugitives” issue (1.9.4.4) was addressed partially.

That said, the draft Strategy provides for granting NACP the right to independently file civil confiscation claims (Result 1.9.2.2). During public discussions, we recommended against this, citing the Agency’s already heavy workload and the advisability of limiting the measure to granting NACP procedural powers to collect evidence following amendments to Article 290 of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine. Instead, the NACP would be better served by gaining the ability to independently represent its own protocols in court, rather than relying on prosecutors — a measure already envisaged in the State Anti-Corruption Program for 2023–2025 but not yet implemented.

The draft’s wording also fails to cover the scenario of filing a civil confiscation claim following an acquittal, addressing only cases where proceedings have been closed. This creates a legal gap, since an acquittal and the closure of proceedings are distinct procedural institutions. In the absence of a clear provision allowing for civil confiscation following an acquittal, the state risks losing this tool in cases where individuals are acquitted due to evidentiary shortcomings and the higher standard of proof in criminal proceedings compared to civil ones. The problem of SAPO prosecutors lacking the right to obtain restricted-access information for the purpose of building an evidence base in unjustified assets cases also goes unaddressed.

TI Ukraine proposed conditioning the referral of cases based on NACP protocols to the HACC on a prior strengthening of the court’s capacity, citing the court’s heavy caseload and shortage of judges. The draft retains provision 1.9.3.3 on the adjudication of cases by HACC without any such caveat, although Section 1.10.4 provides for measures to improve the court’s efficiency. The logical connection between these provisions is not apparent, and the temporal sequencing of their implementation is not defined.

We emphasized the need to specify the provisions on special confiscation and statutes of limitations in the Criminal Code of Ukraine (modifying the point at which the limitation period begins and expanding the grounds for suspension). The draft operates with general language about bringing legislation into conformity with EU and OECD standards, which could theoretically encompass these issues.

The most problematic gap is the absence of any provision on abolishing the automatic closure of cases upon the expiry of pre-trial investigation deadlines. This is one of the most acute problems in practice and is already included on the list of priority reforms on Ukraine’s EU accession path and in the Rule of Law Roadmap — yet the anti-corruption strategy, as the highest-level anti-corruption policy document, makes no mention of it.

Compared to the previous Anti-Corruption Strategy, the draft contains no provisions on the effectiveness of anti-money laundering efforts. This is a cause for concern given the circumstances of the Midas case, which point to insufficient financial monitoring effectiveness, and the European Commission’s warning that the freezing and confiscation of criminal assets remain very limited in scope.

However, in the section on the judicial system and the status of judges, our proposal was accepted: selection to the High Qualifications Commission of Judges and the High Council of Justice should continue to be based on an improved selection process with the participation of independent experts nominated by international partners and holding a decisive vote. And in the section on the prosecution service, public order, and countering criminal offenses, a positive development is the proposal to establish robust procedures for the appointment and dismissal of the Prosecutor General to mitigate risks of informal or political influence, as well as to reinstate competitive selection for positions of prosecutors in the Prosecutor General’s Office and regional prosecution offices, in line with European Commission recommendations.

At the same time, it is critically important that ambitious strategic outcomes do not remain merely declaratory. The experience of the previous Strategy shows that even progressive provisions can be nullified by a lack of political will. The Strategy could also have established mechanisms to protect the independence of anti-corruption bodies from harmful legislative initiatives, as occurred in the summer of 2025 with the law that sought to curtail the independence of the NABU and the SAPO.

Recovery

Recovery has for the first time been designated as a standalone chapter of the draft AS, as one of the priority areas of state policy. Given its cross-cutting nature, some of the related problems are also reflected in the chapters on construction and public procurement. The dedicated recovery chapter focuses on strategic planning, regulatory framework, and the selection of recovery projects.

The absence of a comprehensive state recovery strategy is the first problem the Strategy aims to address. Despite the existence of individual planning documents at the local and regional levels, no holistic state-level strategy for eliminating the consequences of the armed aggression and for post-war recovery has been approved, notwithstanding the regulatory prerequisites for one and prior attempts to develop such a document.

The existence of a document that would conceptually define the nature, objectives, and priorities of recovery — and provide for mechanisms of coordination, monitoring, and accountability — is a critically necessary precondition for effective planning, adequate financing, and the implementation of recovery projects. At the same time, approving a comprehensive and actionable recovery strategy will be no simple task, for several reasons.

Recovery is a complex area that intersects with many areas of state policy. Certain aspects of recovery have already been addressed in a range of sector-specific policies and strategic documents. Under these conditions, formulating a coherent recovery strategy requires careful alignment of its key provisions with a broad range of stakeholders and proper coordination among different priorities.

Moreover, there is no shared understanding of the very concept of “recovery” — its scope, priorities, and components. For some, it means returning to the pre-war state; for others, modernization and “building back better”; for others still, a mixed model dependent on sector and territory. The Strategy risks being either too general or failing to secure the support of key stakeholders.

Second, the data on which the strategy would need to be based (the scale of destruction, losses, needs, and their prioritization) is constantly changing. Furthermore, management decisions in the recovery sphere are not always grounded in complete, reliable, and systematized data. Under these conditions, it is difficult to enshrine in a strategic document objectives and priorities that will not have lost their relevance by the time of implementation. The draft AS rightly identifies this as a distinct critical challenge requiring resolution.

Third, in wartime conditions, the logic of recovery is largely subordinated to the priority of rapid response in specific areas or sectors, which complicates the alignment of such decisions with long-term planning.

Among the other problems identified in the draft Strategy’s recovery section, it is worth noting the government’s active use of pilot projects as an alternative to applying the provisions of permanent legislation. This mechanism effectively allows for departures from general permitting procedures, funding rules, and oversight mechanisms.

Since the start of the full-scale war, the use of pilot projects has taken on a systemic character — driven, on the one hand, by the need for swift decision-making, and giving rise, on the other hand, to risks of legislative fragmentation, reduced procedural predictability, weakened transparency and accountability, and inefficient use of public funds.

TI Ukraine previously researched the pilot project on the comprehensive recovery of settlements affected by Russian aggression. The findings showed that, due to gaps in the conditions governing the experiment, the reconstruction of one of the planned settlements was effectively dropped from the program. Moreover, over two years of implementation, only approximately 8% of the planned number of facilities had been restored.

The draft Anti-Corruption Strategy proposes to regulate the mechanism for launching government pilot projects, by providing for a clear definition of their legal nature, a mandatory justification for departures from standard procedures, the publication of information on their implementation and results, and the exercise of state financial oversight with respect to such projects. The proposed approach would create the preconditions for a more transparent and clearly defined use of pilot projects and for reducing corruption risks in the recovery sphere. 

At the same time, the requirement to justify departures from standard procedures risks becoming a formality in the absence of clear criteria for the permissibility of such departures. Furthermore, failure to achieve the declared objective of a pilot project, or the absence of a substantiated report on its results, should be treated as grounds for its termination. These aspects should be taken into account in the preparation of the State Anti-Corruption Program.

The final two problems in the recovery — the absence of a single approved mechanism for prioritizing recovery projects, and the absence of a Unified Public Investment Project Management Information System — are closely interrelated.

The public investment management reform envisages the creation of a Unified Public Investment Project Management Information System (the Unified Information System), which is meant to be used for the prioritization and selection of public investment projects and programs — including those in the recovery sector — and to contain information on their implementation. However, the Unified Information System is not yet operational, and the formation of the Unified Project Portfolio for 2026 was carried out using the DREAM system, which only partially captures information on project implementation, readiness status, level of financing, and so forth.

Prioritization at the state level is currently applied to individual investment projects and investment programs, which may combine several such projects. However, legislation does not provide for a clear mechanism for prioritizing the projects included within investment programs. This gap creates risks of non-transparent selection, the inclusion of questionable projects in investment programs, and their subsequent entry into the Unified Project Portfolio.

The implementation of the measures set out in the draft Strategy will be of key importance for preventing non-transparent allocation of funds, duplication of financing, and their inefficient use. This includes ensuring the prioritization of all investment programs and projects — including those forming part of investment programs — as well as the introduction and proper functioning of the Unified Public Investment Project Management Information System, of which the DREAM system is an integral component. 

Public procurement

Last year, experts from the DOZORRO TI Ukraine project participated in drafting the Anti-Corruption Strategy’s public procurement section, conducting the necessary research and continuing to develop proposals for the corresponding expected results and measures. 

Based on the outcomes of a public expert survey, five problems were identified as the most significant in this area, the first of which is the abuse of the ability to modify essential terms of a procurement contract. Such practices occur both at the contract execution stage — when parties diverge from the draft contract published in the tender — and at the implementation stage. 

To minimize such abuses, we proposed the following: 

• defining a minimum list of procurement contract terms that are essential and may not be arbitrarily modified, taking into account how specific terms affect competition and the interests of the contracting parties,
• improving the legal regulation of the conditions for modifying procurement contracts, clarifying the rules governing price amendments, and expanding the volume of information published on contract modifications,
• developing the Prozorro system to a level that allows a procurement contract to be concluded automatically on the basis of its machine-readable draft form and introducing a full-text search function across contracts and supplementary agreements to facilitate oversight of their legality. 

The second problem the future Anti-Corruption Strategy will seek to address in the procurement sector is discriminatory and excessive requirements in procurement. This refers not only to overt discrimination in the classical sense, but also to excessive requirements that make procurement unattractive to participate in yet cannot be challenged — for example, excessively long payment terms and minimum timeframes for the submission of tender proposals. 

To improve the situation, we proposed introducing an appeal mechanism before the Antimonopoly Committee for purchases conducted through electronic catalogs; researching the factors that prevent businesses from challenging discriminatory conditions; defining requirements for permissible payment terms under procurement contracts; and extending the timeframes for the submission of tender proposals. It would also be appropriate to digitize procurement conditions and raise the professional level of contracting entities.

The third problem is the abuse of direct procurement, particularly under martial law. To address it, the list of grounds for conducting non-competitive above-threshold procurements needs to be revised and reduced, and the conditions and methods for conducting them optimized — including by reinstating the negotiated procedure where possible. In addition, it is important to regulate how the value of a procurement subject is determined when conducted directly, without a tender. 

The final two problems relate to proper oversight and accountability for intentional procurement violations. The procurement monitoring mechanism requires further development and improvement — in particular, a preventive and risk-based approach to monitoring is needed, primarily through pre-contract monitoring. It is equally important to ensure the effective implementation of the obligations identified in monitoring conclusions. A standardized list of remedial measures depending on the severity of violations, as well as an expedited court review procedure for monitoring conclusions, should help here. 

With respect to accountability for violations, the focus of proposals is primarily on ensuring that such accountability is inevitable. This requires updating the composition of administrative offenses and eliminating the factors that lead courts to frequently classify identified violations as minor or to dispute their existence altogether. 

The problems outlined may in some cases manifest not only as corrupt practices but also in situations where there is no corrupt intent. Nonetheless, each of them facilitates such practices or reduces the preventive effect on corruption in the work of contracting authorities.

Most of the expected strategic results will require legislative amendments, technical changes in the Prozorro system, and additional research. The adoption of Draft Law No. 11520 should facilitate the implementation of some of the steps outlined. 

The author team has traveled a long road of research and development of the Anti-Corruption Strategy draft, which began in January 2025 and continues to this day. We hope that, following the necessary approvals and revisions, the key ideas and intentions embedded in our proposals will be preserved. 

Conclusions

The draft new Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–2030 is fairly uneven in terms of both coverage of the necessary issues and NACP’s responsiveness to TI Ukraine’s comments. Certain sections of the Strategy are well prepared, reflecting both the positions of civil society and international partners, including the EU. However, on other matters our assessments were more critical and were not taken on board.

Among the key issues, we highlight the following.

1. Duplication of existing norms. Certain sections (for example, the section on state anti-corruption policy) repeat provisions of existing legislation without adding regulatory value. 
2. Insufficient specificity of certain strategic results. This applies, for example, to the protection of anti-corruption bodies’ independence from harmful legislative initiatives.
3. Failure to incorporate critical comments in the draft Strategy. The current version of the document leaves unaddressed the concerns regarding the ineffectiveness of the e-declaration verification mechanism, the absence of automated assignment of monitoring cases at the NACP, and the need to abolish the automatic closure of cases upon the expiry of pre-trial investigation deadlines. 
4. Incomplete coverage of problems identified but unresolved under the previous Strategy. The document contains no provisions on the effectiveness of anti-money laundering efforts, despite evident problems in this area. 

A recurring issue is the uneven level of detail across sections of the Strategy — a problem likely attributable to the involvement of different author groups without sufficiently rigorous editorial processing of the final document. This uneven structure creates the risk of uneven implementation of the Strategy in practice. 

We hope that some of these problems will still be addressed through the approval process with the relevant authorities — though the prospects for this currently appear uncertain.

Institutional and organizational matters

This category is anchored by the revised ARMA Regulation. The Law of June 18, 2025, introduced substantial clarifications regarding the Agency’s powers and organizational structure, and the Cabinet of Ministers brought the Regulation in line with the amended law accordingly.

The Regulation now expressly provides that ARMA disposes of assets under management through electronic auctions conducted on the state and municipal property privatization platform (Prozorro.Sale), in the manner and within the timelines established by the Cabinet of Ministers. It also provides that the Agency shall notify the prosecutor of the need to transition to asset disposal where, in the course of monitoring management effectiveness, circumstances are identified that preclude preservation of the asset’s economic value.

In connection with this last power, it is critically important that the corresponding prosecutorial authority be regulated — either through joint departmental instruments or through amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code — so that prosecutors can respond effectively to ARMA’s referrals on issues arising in the management of seized assets.

Amendments have also been made to the Regulation on ARMA authorized officers. Pursuant to the ARMA Law, authorized officers may now access assets transferred to ARMA for management, as well as seized assets in the identification stage, upon presentation of their official credentials — without restriction. This will enable the Agency to effectively exercise its authority to assess whether, and by what means, it can efficiently manage any given seized asset.

In addition, ARMA approved by internal order the Regulation on the Internal Control and Risk Assessment Department of ARMA’s Central Office and the Regulation on the Internal Security Department of ARMA’s Central Office. 

The Internal Control and Risk Assessment Department coordinates ARMA’s institutional oversight and risk management framework, conducts audits and investigations to identify violations in the area of asset tracing, preservation, and management, monitors the lawfulness of procurement and the use of budgetary funds, and prepares policy proposals on the detection, tracing, and management of seized and confiscated assets. The Internal Security Department is charged with safeguarding the integrity of ARMA personnel: it prevents corruption-related misconduct, conducts internal investigations, monitors compliance with ethical standards and conflict-of-interest rules, investigates reports of staff involvement in unlawful conduct, organizes pre-appointment vetting of candidates, and advises staff on ethics.

Accountability matters

The Regulation on the Public Oversight Council (POC) defines the status, mandate, and operating procedures of the Council as a standing collegial body exercising civil oversight at ARMA. The Council oversees ARMA’s activities, monitors the effectiveness of the Agency’s operations, reviews draft regulations, controls the lawfulness of manager selection and the progress of asset disposal, and facilitates ARMA’s engagement with civil society. The Council comprises nine members serving on a voluntary, unpaid basis. Sessions are held no less than quarterly, and its decisions are recommendatory in nature.

In the area of asset management, the Council has the following powers: 

• exercising civil oversight over the lawfulness and transparency of asset manager selection, by delegating its representatives directly to selection procedures; 
• monitoring the lawfulness and transparency of asset disposal and the effectiveness of the management of assets transferred to ARMA. 

The Head of ARMA may involve POC representatives in asset management effectiveness reviews and, where a complaint is received from an asset owner, in establishing grounds for a further review — up to and including membership of the relevant commission. POC representatives are correspondingly obliged to maintain the confidentiality of commercial and other legally protected information obtained in the course of such oversight activities.

The Council Formation Procedure establishes a competitive selection process through open-ranking online public voting. Candidates are nominated by civil society organizations active in anti-corruption, criminal justice or business protection for at least two years, and are subject to an extensive list of eligibility restrictions — including former ARMA employees, individuals with conflicts of interest, and foreign nationals. Voting must be conducted online for no fewer than three days, and the nine candidates with the highest vote tallies are deemed elected.

Previously, public oversight functions were performed by the Public Council at ARMA, which held a broad range of powers, including participation in the inter-agency asset disposal commission, oversight of budgetary expenditure, anti-corruption review, and the right to delegate representatives to competitive selection commissions. The new framework establishes the POC as a standing elected collegial body with enhanced powers in the area of asset management. The predecessor council has accordingly ceased to exist, while the new Council has yet to be constituted.

Additionally, the government approved the composition of the commission for conducting an independent external assessment (audit) of ARMA’s performance. Under the revised framework, all members of this commission are nominated by development partners, with a view to strengthening independence and eliminating undue influence from appointing entities.

Asset identification and intake

In this area, regrettably, no secondary legislation has yet been adopted. The government has yet to enact instruments governing how ARMA will store seized assets transferred to it for management, how valuators of seized assets will be selected, and what methodology will be applied to determine the feasibility of managing a given asset. 

In coordination with the Prosecutor General’s Office, instruments must be adopted to regulate asset identification and intake into management.

Interaction between law enforcement authorities and ARMA was previously ad hoc, which meant that assets that were objectively difficult to manage could be transferred to the Agency. The identification stage was introduced specifically to address this problem. On the other hand, there had been difficulties with prosecutors signing asset transfer and acceptance records; it is therefore significant that the Law now establishes deadlines for executing such records and mandates that these processes be regulated by joint orders of ARMA and the PGO at the secondary legislation level.

Separately, the appraiser selection procedure has yet to be aligned with the Law. A specific competitive selection procedure for valuation entities previously existed; however, the Law streamlined the process by providing that valuation entities are to be selected in accordance with the Law on Public Procurement. A draft instrument published on ARMA’s website specifies that valuation entities will be selected through open tender procedures in accordance with Article 15 of that Law, and that the corresponding framework agreement will be concluded for a term not exceeding one year. 

Selection of asset managers

We have previously addressed the updated framework for selecting managers of seized assets under the amended Law. On February 5, however, the government finally adopted the secondary legislation defining several important procedural nuances. TI Ukraine participated in the drafting of the asset manager selection instruments — our priority was to ensure that the substantive provisions and safeguards we developed were preserved through the subsequent clearance and adoption process. Fortunately, the structural logic and the safeguards were retained, and the text prepared with our involvement underwent primarily editorial revisions. 

The government has introduced its own definition of “related person” through four categories: related persons under the Tax Code, close persons under the Anti-Corruption Law, affiliated persons under the Joint-Stock Companies Law, and persons in civil-law or employment relationships with the owner or suspect where such relationships terminated fewer than five years before the announcement. 

For both simple and complex asset selection procedures, one open question remains: whether it is appropriate to cap the maximum manager’s remuneration at 100% of asset management profit. However, no sufficiently justified alternative approach was identified during the drafting process. Accordingly, unless the resolutions are amended, participants will be able to enter auctions at a starting remuneration level of 100%. 

Implementation of the selection procedures in the Prozorro system is ongoing, and initial steps have already been taken. 

Simple assets

For the pre-qualification of prospective managers, the resolution clarified the announcement timeline: it remains in effect from the date of publication until the date of the subsequent announcement, but no later than December 1 of the following year. Amendments to the announcement are prohibited throughout its validity period.

The resolution separately provides that the electronic system automatically calculates abnormally low tenders and notifies both the participant and ARMA — a mechanism not found in the Law, which merely defined the concept of an abnormally low tender and set deadlines for justification.

Pursuant to our proposals, the simple asset manager selection rules now include:

• a key safeguard providing that ARMA and the auction winner enter into a contract on the exact terms and at the exact remuneration level specified in the announcement and the winner’s tender, which neither the contracting authority nor the manager may vary unilaterally,
• the auction mechanics: the Prozorro system automatically evaluates tenders, including identification of abnormally low ones, and notifies both participants and ARMA. The correct sequence of participant actions is specified — the starting point is the highest remuneration level, each participant may lower the price by at least one step per auction stage, and where tenders are equal, the participant who submitted later proceeds first; 
• the necessary procedural detail: how tenders are submitted and recorded by the electronic system; the impossibility of submitting a tender after the established deadline; a participant’s right to submit only one tender, or to withdraw or amend it; the register of submitted tenders and its content; and separate provisions on the publication of information and documents. 

Additionally, the rules governing simple asset manager selection have the potential for improvement if future amendments were to:

• remove asset-specific details from the pre-qualification announcement, given that pre-qualification is not conducted in respect of specific assets — which are unknown at that stage;
• by analogy with the complex asset selection procedure, define what constitutes adequate justification for an abnormally low tender, and provide for publication of documents confirming a winner’s refusal to execute a management agreement;
• introduce a safeguard ensuring that the list of documents ARMA requires from pre-qualification participants is non-discriminatory and does not include documents not required by law;
• include in the auction announcement information on the owner of the seized asset and any suspect or accused in the relevant criminal proceedings, or any respondent in civil forfeiture proceedings (where applicable), so that participants and the public may assess any connection between such persons and the auction winner.

Complex assets

The new selection rules for complex asset managers focus on ensuring a transparent, non-discriminatory and clearly defined process. A key objective was to distinguish between the commission’s pre-auction document review and the automated evaluation of tenders (remuneration levels) in the auction itself, among participants admitted thereto — an area where the Law contained certain inaccuracies. 

Pursuant to TI Ukraine’s proposals, the following measures were incorporated: 

• a document deficiency cure mechanism: where the commission identifies deficiencies, it must issue a single request to the participant to remedy the documents within 24 hours;
• requirements for justifying abnormally low tenders: the resolution provides that adequate justification must include calculations demonstrating cost reductions, favorable conditions or increased revenue relative to the indicative plan;
• substantive limitations on additional qualification requirements: these must not restrict competition, create discrimination or confer advantages on specific entities, and must be proportionate to the management needs of the particular asset;
• regulation of cases where ARMA amends an announcement: the Agency has the right to make amendments prior to the deadline for document submission. To ensure non-discriminatory treatment, the document submission period is automatically extended so that at least ten days remain from the date of amendment until the deadline;
• a specific provision addressing the scenario where ARMA fails to issue clarifications in time: the Prozorro system automatically suspends the procedure and does not advance to the next stage; to reinstate the procedure, ARMA must publish its response and simultaneously extend the document submission period by at least seven days.

The government also elaborated on a number of procedural aspects of the selection process. ARMA prepares in advance a list of possible additional qualification requirements relating to participants’ experience, facilities, permits and licenses, which it transmits to the commission. The commission then decides whether to apply these requirements no later than two business days before the announcement is published. 

The resolution further clarifies the post-announcement procedure: the day after the document submission deadline, ARMA notifies the commission of the participants and transmits the relevant materials. Participation by joint ventures is regulated separately, with consolidated aggregation of their indicators.

To further improve the regulation of complex asset manager selection, it may be advisable to: 

• include in the auction announcement information on the owner of the seized asset and any suspect or accused in the relevant criminal proceedings, or any respondent in civil forfeiture proceedings (where applicable), so that participants and the public may assess any connection between such persons and the auction winner;
• add a clarification specifying that the list of information and/or documents required for the 24-hour deficiency cure must correspond to the requirements set out in the selection announcement, so that no new requirements are introduced at the proposal review stage;
• by analogy with the public procurement framework, introduce a safeguard ensuring that ARMA’s list of required documents does not include documents not required by law.

The resolution also regulates the operation of the Commission for the selection of the manager of complex assets. It provides for roll-call voting with each member’s position recorded in the minutes, individual written assessments by each member for each qualification requirement in respect of each participant separately, recusal and conflict-of-interest procedures with a mandatory disclosure obligation no later than the next business day, the right to record a dissenting opinion in writing, the option of remote sessions, and the commission’s right to invite participants to sessions and to send them written requests.

Procurement of asset management services

The ARMA Law provides that where no manager of a simple or complex asset is identified following a repeat selection procedure conducted under Article 21-3 or 21-4 of the Law, the Agency shall procure asset management services through an open tender procedure in accordance with the Law on Public Procurement. Participation in such procurement is open to business entities meeting the qualification requirements set out in Article 21-3(7) and Article 21-4(5) of the ARMA Law, except for participants who refused to execute a management agreement following simple or complex asset manager selection procedures.

The government resolution regulates the process for determining the estimated value of the procurement item — that is, the projected expenditure on engaging a manager, which serves as the basis for budget planning and tendering. 

Four instruments are established for calculating the estimated value, arranged in a hierarchy. The primary methods are market consultations (sending requests to market participants to ascertain current prices and possible management approaches) and the market price comparison method (a minimum of three price proposals, from which abnormally high and low figures are excluded, with the remaining proposals averaged). Where fewer than three proposals remain after filtering, historical procurement price analysis with inflation and exchange rate indexation is applied.

The fallback instrument is calculation on the basis of an approved indicative asset management plan — applied either where none of the preceding methods yields a result, or where the figures obtained exceed the planned values by a factor of two or more. The formula incorporates expected monthly management income, minimum storage costs, and the manager’s base remuneration at 10% of profit, multiplied by twelve months. The Procedure thus provides a methodological framework for a reasoned determination of the cost of management services in the most complex cases where market-based selection has not produced a result.

That said, the Procedure has certain shortcomings that it would be advisable to address in any future revision:

• insufficient safeguards against inflation of the estimated procurement value. In particular, for the market price comparison method to be applied effectively, requests to business entities should be identical in content for all recipients and should include all material conditions of service delivery, thereby enabling the solicitation of relevant pricing information and the formulation of proposals. As currently drafted, there are no requirements as to the content of the request. The class of economic operators to whom requests will be sent is framed rather broadly and is not entirely appropriate for management services — requests are directed primarily to “manufacturers, official representatives, and dealers,” whereas the procurement item is management services; 
• no provision for publication of any information on how ARMA determined the estimated value of the procurement; 
• the current definition of estimated value is rather broad — it encompasses “all possible costs associated with engaging a manager” and does not include the criterion of service delivery “on specific conditions,” in contrast, for example, to the definition of estimated value under the Ministry of Economy Order No. 275 of February 18, 2020. 

Attention should also be drawn to technical shortcomings in the Procedure. The market consultation process should yield not only “optimal procurement item requirements” but also the estimated value itself. Additionally, paragraph 8 of the Procedure should apply only “where the historical procurement price analysis method is used,” rather than in all cases of estimated value determination. 

The formula for calculating estimated value on the basis of historical procurement prices incorporates a “historical period price” figure. It is not, however, specified how a single historical period price is derived, given that the method generally draws on multiple sources. If the arithmetic mean is to be used in the formula, a provision to that effect — together with other relevant details — must be included.

Asset management and oversight

In this area, only the Procedure and Timelines for Developing, Approving, and Amending the Indicative Asset Management Plan, and the Procedure for Monitoring the Effectiveness of Asset Management, have been developed to date. The government has not yet adopted model management agreements.

The Procedure for Developing and Approving the Indicative Asset Management Plan elaborates on the mechanics of this document, which serves as the foundation for all subsequent manager selection procedures. Whereas the Law merely referenced the existence of the plan and its mandatory content, the resolution establishes specific drafting timelines: 20 business days for simple assets and 30 business days for complex assets, running from the date of execution of the transfer and acceptance certificate. For complex assets, an additional 20-business-day benchmark is introduced to maintain compliance with the statutory timelines for transferring an asset into management. 

The resolution also specifies the information sources for preparing the plan: the management feasibility assessment, the asset inspection report, valuation and expert findings, inventory data, and publicly available sources ranging from Prozorro to statistical services of foreign states. A notable new requirement is the mandatory approval of the plan by the National Security and Stock Market Committee (NSSMC) where the asset comprises a share in the capital or shares of a professional capital markets participant — with the NSSMC afforded ten business days for that purpose.

Regarding amendments to the plan, the resolution introduces several important procedural mechanisms. First, a manager may initiate amendments, but not earlier than 30 calendar days after taking the asset over — a safeguard against premature revision of planned performance benchmarks. The manager’s submission must include a list of proposed amendments, a reasoned justification with supporting calculations, and a risk analysis. ARMA must consider the submission within ten business days and communicate its decision within the following five business days; any refusal must be reasoned. Second, where amendments to the plan are made after the manager selection announcement has been published — for both simple and complex assets — the proposal submission period is automatically extended so that at least seven calendar days remain from the date of the amendment. Once the proposal submission deadline has passed, no further amendments to the plan are permitted — an important guarantee of the stability of competition conditions.

The government has also approved the Expenditure Approval Procedure for asset managers. This instrument establishes the mechanism for ARMA to approve the expenditures that managers incur in the effective management of seized assets and that are reimbursed from management revenues. The Procedure defines five categories of expenditure subject to approval: the manager’s remuneration; costs of asset maintenance and security; insurance costs; costs of professional services (consulting, legal, valuation, etc.); and other costs provided for in the indicative management plan and agreement. The overriding requirement is that all expenditures be economically justified, efficient and directed toward achieving the objectives of asset management.

The Procedure establishes a detailed approval process: the manager submits a cost estimate for the forthcoming reporting period, together with a justification, a market price analysis and a projected economic return calculation. ARMA conducts a comprehensive review — legal, financial-economic and technical — within 15 business days, and issues a reasoned decision to approve or refuse. Significantly, expenditures not approved by ARMA or exceeding approved amounts without supplementary authorization are not reimbursable. The procedure also mandates that the manager file reports on actual expenditure, with a comparison of planned against actual figures.

The Procedure for Monitoring the Effectiveness of Asset Management represents a substantial expansion of the conceptual apparatus compared to its predecessor: it introduces definitions of material agreement terms, management effectiveness criteria, complaints and complainants, and — critically — the concepts of potential and actual conflicts of interest on the part of the manager, with a clear distinction between them. Moreover, new management effectiveness criteria are now approved by a separate ARMA order, grounded in four principles: profitability, preservation of operational capacity, financial stability and economic viability — a dimension entirely absent from the previous procedure.

The architecture of oversight modalities has also been significantly restructured. The previous procedure provided for two forms: a desk review (conducted on ARMA premises) and a field review, with the desk review as the primary modality and field reviews reserved for cases arising from desk reviews or exceptional circumstances. The new procedure restructures the system entirely: it introduces a documentary review (equivalent to the former desk review, conducted no less than monthly, within up to seven business days), a field review (no less than quarterly, within up to 14 business days), and an additional complaint-triggered review (within up to seven business days). The field review is no longer derivative of the documentary review but is conducted independently on a regular basis. The minimum composition of the review commission has also changed, from three members under the previous procedure to four under the new one.

A fundamentally new element is the procedure for reviewing complaints lodged by asset owners. It provides for the establishment of a standing working group for complaint review, including two POC representatives; grants the authorized unit the right to conduct an additional review without mandatory prior notification to the manager; and establishes clear requirements as to the content of complaints and supporting documents. The participation of the POC has simultaneously been expanded — its representatives may be included in the review commission during additional complaint-triggered reviews. 

Procedural safeguards for managers have also been strengthened. The advance notice period for field reviews has been extended from two to five business days, and managers have been afforded more time to submit objections — five business days rather than three. The review report is now also sent to the manager’s email address as specified in the agreement, which was not previously required. Finally, the new procedure expands the grounds for action: in addition to the existing grounds of deficient management and attempts to dispose of assets, a new ground has been added — the identification of circumstances precluding preservation of an asset’s economic value — which triggers a distinct set of measures pursuant to Article 21-6 of the Law.

Asset disposal

The government has not adopted any new instruments on asset disposal. It should be noted that the ARMA Law specifies that asset disposal, with certain exceptions, is to be conducted through electronic auctions on the Prozorro.Sale electronic trading platform.

Although disposal was already conducted through that platform under the previous procedure, there are grounds for further regulatory improvement.

One such ground concerns the inability of former owners to acquire an asset — an issue illustrated by the sale of land on the Borzhava resort. Prohibiting this would align with international standards. For example, a new FATF guide on recovering assets obtained through crime notes that allowing criminals to regain their assets through auctions, even at market price, may undermine confiscation goals (such as deterrence) and damage the reputation of authorities. Some states conduct relevant checks on buyers. This is stated more directly in paragraph 40 of the Preamble to EU Directive 2024/1260 of April 24, 2024, which provides that the state should take measures to prevent assets from returning into the ownership of convicted persons or persons associated with them.

The allocation of assets into lots also warrants attention. In the Borzhava case, ARMA structured the disposal into just three lots: the first comprising 245 land plots, the second comprising 208 land plots, and the third comprising the lower terminal with a chairlift, the upper terminal of a ski lift, and 41 land plots. ARMA’s explanation — that the lots were formed taking into account the adjacency and size of the plots to maximize the commercial attractiveness of each lot and minimize the time to receipt of disposal proceeds — is far from persuasive, given that all prior auctions had been unsuccessful, save for the price-reduction auctions.

Maintenance of the seized assets register

The new Regulation on the Seized Assets Register was adopted by the Ministry of Justice rather than ARMA. This instrument substantially expands the scope of data recorded in the Register with respect to asset management activities. The previous instrument captured only proceeds from asset management and disposal. The new Regulation provides for detailed recording of the entire management lifecycle: the results of manager selection; the material terms of the management agreement, including remuneration; a link to the agreement itself; monthly management revenues; the amount of reimbursed costs; and the results of management effectiveness monitoring. Asset pools are now also recorded separately, with an indication of the economic, technological or functional unity of the assets comprising the pool. With respect to asset disposal, the Register now records a link to the electronic auction and the asset’s valuation, rather than merely the disposal proceeds.

The timelines and mechanism for entering information into the Register have also changed. The previous Regulation established a deadline of seven business days from receipt of data. The new Regulation has reduced this to the next business day following receipt of information from authorized entities. A right has also been introduced for the authorized official to return incomplete information with an indication of the missing particulars — a data quality mechanism that did not previously exist. The grounds for deletion of personal data have been clarified as well: the new Regulation adds the entry of an acquittal or the termination of criminal proceedings as distinct grounds for deletion, whereas the previous instrument was limited to the lifting of the seizure order.

Conclusions and recommendations

The ARMA reform enacted by Law No. 4503-IX constitutes a genuine systemic step forward — it has materially strengthened the mechanisms for manager selection, management effectiveness oversight, accountability and transparency. As of February 2026, however, the reform has been only partially implemented: a significant portion of the secondary legislation remains outstanding, without which the new mechanisms cannot become fully operational. This creates operational uncertainty and the risk that ambitious legislative changes will remain aspirational rather than effective.

In light of the foregoing, the following steps are recommended:

• adopt joint orders of ARMA and the Prosecutor General’s Office on the asset identification and intake procedures;
• approve the procedure for storing assets accepted into ARMA’s management and the methodology for determining management feasibility;
• adopt model asset management agreements and the expenditure approval procedure;
• align the appraiser selection procedure with the amended Law;
• adopt a revised asset disposal procedure incorporating key new features: a prohibition on asset acquisition by former owners or their related persons (in accordance with FATF standards and EU Directive 2024/1260), and clear lot formation criteria designed to maximize disposal proceeds;
• regulate the corresponding obligations of prosecutorial authorities with respect to the timelines and manner of responding to ARMA’s referrals on the need to transition to asset disposal.

It is also critically important to establish a monitoring mechanism for the implementation of adopted secondary instruments, incorporating the views of key stakeholders, in order to identify practical challenges and operational needs in the processes within the Agency’s remit. 

Overall, the pace of secondary legislation adoption is insufficient, given that the key provisions of the Law were to take effect as of February 2026. Notwithstanding this, provided that high-quality secondary legislation is adopted promptly, there remains a genuine prospect that ARMA will, in time, be able to build greater institutional credibility — both among other government authorities and with the broader public. 

Developing and approving the HACC development strategy 

In reviewing the Court’s internal administrative and organizational documents, the Accounting Chamber noted that they did not include a Development Strategy for the High Anti-Corruption Court as an institution. Such a document would define the institution’s fundamental directions of activity going forward. 

Although legislation does not require the HACC to approve a Development Strategy, the absence of such a strategy may negatively affect the Court’s planning processes and the achievement of its goals, the identification of strategic priorities, and the efficient use of available resources. A strategy would also be an important tool for demonstrating the Court’s openness, transparency, and accountability to the public. 

Against this background, the Accounting Chamber recommended that HACC develop and approve, by December 1, 2025, a Development Strategy that includes clearly defined priorities, strategic goals, and specific measures to achieve them. 

It is notable that the European Commission made a similar recommendation for the HACC (to develop a strategy to ensure the effectiveness of judicial proceedings) in November, in its 2025 EU Enlargement Report on Ukraine as a candidate country.  

In late November, the HACC reported that it had approved its 2026–2028 Institutional Development Strategy, meaning the Accounting Chamber’s recommendation was implemented on time.

Court staffing

One of the key problems affecting support for the High Anti-Corruption Court remains staff shortages—both among judges and within the Court’s staff. 

At the time of the audit, HACC’s judicial positions were filled at slightly under 60%: the actual number of judges administering justice, including judges of the HACC Appeals Chamber, was 37 out of the 63 available positions. This situation led to increased workload for judges, longer case consideration times, and an accumulation of cases. According to the Accounting Chamber, from September 2019 to November 2024, the number of pending criminal proceedings before the High Anti-Corruption Court doubled. 

One of the main factors driving the substantial gap between the approved number of judges and the Court’s actual staffing levels was the lengthy second competition for selecting HACC judges, which began in November 2023 and was ongoing at the time of the audit. 

The audit found significant delays at certain stages of the selection procedures. In particular, the qualification assessment of candidates was scheduled only seven months after the competition was announced, and the qualification exam was scheduled four months after the qualification assessment. Ultimately, the appointment of the selected candidates—only two remained after completing the competition—did not take place until June 2025.

The prolonged judicial selection competition not only hindered the Court’s ability to secure the necessary human resources, but also created risks of Ukraine failing to meet its international commitments under the Ukraine Facility Plan. That plan envisioned a 60% increase in the authorized number of HACC judges in the first quarter of 2025.

As a result, the Accounting Chamber recommended that the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ), as the body responsible for announcing and conducting the selection of HACC judges, establish deadline timeframes for competitive selection procedures for judicial positions. This timeframe was to begin upon publication on the Commission’s official website of information on the results of considering candidates’ admission, take into account the completion of the qualification assessment and/or participation in the competition, and end with the adoption of a decision identifying the competition winners. 

In May 2025, the HQCJ amended the Regulation on the Procedure and Methodology for Qualification Assessment and the tools used to determine it, including provisions allowing the Commission to set deadlines for qualification assessment by its decision, thereby implementing the Accounting Chamber’s recommendation.

The absence of established timeframes for selection procedures was not the only problem in selecting candidates for judicial positions at the High Anti-Corruption Court. Other shortcomings include a narrowed pool of potential candidates due to specific work experience requirements, an excessively short initial document submission period, incorrect questions in the test database, and an unjustifiably high passing score in the cognitive test. However, these shortcomings were not reflected in the audit report, which may indicate an incomplete analysis of problematic aspects of the HACC judicial selection process. 

In terms of staffing the HACC apparatus, the audit recorded a discrepancy between the actual number of HACC staff members and the authorized staffing levels. In particular, more than 120 positions remained vacant; these were established to support the work of newly appointed judges. In view of this, the Accounting Chamber recommended that, by July 1, 2025, the High Anti-Corruption Court initiate and implement effective measures to accelerate staffing of the Court’s apparatus after the full complement of judges is appointed.

In March, the HACC informed the Accounting Chamber that it had appointed 10 HACC staff members to support the work of judges who were to be appointed as a result of the judicial selection competition. At the same time, the Court announced a selection process to create a personnel reserve for 110 vacant positions to be filled after the remaining judges are appointed. Accordingly, implementation of the recommendation is ongoing.

Preventing delays in case consideration 

In assessing the High Anti-Corruption Court’s performance of its judicial mandate, the audit recorded an increase in the number of pending criminal proceedings, which negatively affects the timeframes for their consideration.

This situation was driven both by objective factors—such as the pandemic, the introduction of martial law, and the insufficient number of judges—and by shortcomings in legislative regulation. The latter include limited procedural mechanisms to counter certain abuses of rights by participants in proceedings, an insufficient range of preventive measures in legislation, and the requirement to restart criminal proceedings in the event a judge is replaced on the panel.

Importantly, amendments to criminal procedural legislation aimed at increasing the pace of consideration of corruption and corruption-related criminal offenses had already been planned as one of the measures under the State Anti-Corruption Program. However, the only change that was implemented was allowing criminal proceedings in the HACC, as a court of first instance, to be heard by a single judge.

Therefore, following the audit, the Accounting Chamber recommended that the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), as the implementer of the relevant measure under the State Anti-Corruption Program, prepare and submit to the government a draft law addressing:

• the inadmissibility of abuse of procedural rights by participants in criminal proceedings, as well as enabling an investigating judge or the court to recognize certain actions or omissions by such participants as an abuse; 
• expanding the grounds for imposing monetary penalties for breaches of obligations by participants in criminal proceedings and increasing the amounts of such penalties;
• simplifying the procedure for serving summonses in criminal proceedings on Ukrainian citizens residing abroad;
• narrowing the grounds for adjourning court hearings;
• establishing a procedure and defining the scope and sequence for examining evidence at a court hearing;
• enabling the court to pronounce only the introductory and operative parts of a lengthy verdict, with mandatory service or dispatch of the full text of the verdict to participants in the court proceedings on the day it is pronounced. 

In addition, the Accounting Chamber recommended that the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine take measures to draft and submit to Parliament a draft law allowing a criminal trial to continue if a judge who is not the presiding judge is replaced.

In its research, TI Ukraine has repeatedly highlighted the negative trend of delays in HACC proceedings. Our monitoring found that procedural abuses aimed at delaying court consideration are recorded in 55% of cases. Legislation lacks an effective mechanism to counter such abuses. 

In its 2025 report on Ukraine, the European Commission also emphasized the need to amend the Criminal Procedure Code in order to reduce obstacles and procedural delays in criminal proceedings, especially in high-level corruption cases. 

The Accounting Chamber’s recommendations also align with ours in terms of increasing the amounts of fines and monetary penalties for contempt of court and improper procedural conduct, as well as the need to resolve the problem of restarting a case after a judge is replaced. 

NACP drafted the draft law on Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine on the Inadmissibility of Abuse of Procedural Rights and, starting in late 2024, sent it to the government for consideration three times. However, in the first two instances, the draft law was returned due to disagreements with the Ministry of Justice, the State Bureau of Investigations, and the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.  The most recent attempt to submit the bill to the Cabinet of Ministers took place in July 2025, but due to the government’s resignation, the document was returned again. As of late September, NACP was preparing the draft law for renewed coordination and resubmission, so implementation of the Accounting Chamber’s recommendation remains ongoing.

Unlike NACP, the government did not support the Accounting Chamber’s proposed approach to allowing a criminal trial to continue when a judge who is not the presiding judge is replaced. In the Ministry of Justice’s view, this approach contradicts the general principles of criminal proceedings because it would violate the principle of direct examination of evidence in criminal proceedings. 

However, as early as February 2024, members of Parliament registered a relevant draft law, but it was not placed on the agenda. Therefore, the prospects for adopting such amendments—as well as for implementing the Accounting Chamber’s recommendation by the government—appear unlikely.

Updating court performance and case consideration indicators

Among the other recommendations issued by the Accounting Chamber, it is worth highlighting the need to update HACC’s basic performance indicators by adding an indicator showing the percentage of decisions quashed or amended by higher courts out of the total number of decisions, as well as the need to introduce an indicator for the average length of case consideration for categories within HACC’s jurisdiction. 

The first indicator is essential for assessing the quality of judicial activity, including court decisions, and makes it possible to identify negative trends in a timely manner and respond to them. However, the HACC did not calculate or report this indicator because it was not required by law. Following the Accounting Chamber’s recommendation, the Council of Judges of Ukraine added the relevant indicator to the approved list of Basic Court Performance Indicators. Nevertheless, for almost a year, the administrator of the court’s automated case management system—Information Judicial Systems State Enterprise—has been unable to configure the required functionality, meaning the indicator of quashed and amended decisions is still not being calculated.

Indicators for the average duration of case consideration, in turn, affect the determination of judges’ workload. However, a judge workload level as a criterion for caseload has not been established, making it impossible to assess the effectiveness of the judicial process overall or to determine whether organizational changes are needed. 

Uncertainty around indicators related to the duration of case consideration also makes it impossible to calculate the cost of considering a single case. In view of this, the Accounting Chamber recommended that the High Council of Justice (HCJ) develop and implement indicators for the average duration of case consideration for categories within HACC’s jurisdiction, based on analytical research and consultations with stakeholders.

This initiative was supported by the State Judicial Administration of Ukraine and by the High Anti-Corruption Court itself, and in August the HCJ established a working group to develop and implement indicators for the average duration of case consideration for categories within the jurisdiction of the High Anti-Corruption Court.

Conclusion

The compliance audit of the High Anti-Corruption Court not only highlighted a number of pressing problems affecting support for the Court’s operations—particularly staff shortages and delays in case consideration—but also formulated relevant recommendations to address them. Notably, the substance of these recommendations partly aligns with the position of the European Commission and with TI Ukraine’s analytical findings.

The relevance of the recommendations is also confirmed by the level of their implementation: of the 13 recommendations issued following the audit, the High Anti-Corruption Court and the relevant public authorities implemented 7 within a year, and another 5 are in the process of implementation. Only in one case has implementation not begun—namely, the recommendation that the government draft a bill allowing a criminal trial to continue if a judge is replaced.

In assessing the audit’s impact, it is worth noting the High Anti-Corruption Court’s support for the audit approach to evaluating whether the Court’s operations are adequately resourced, as well as its active communication about existing problems in its work and possible ways to address them. In addition, HACC’s direct implementation of most of the recommendations addressed to it indicates that they are appropriate and responsive to the Court’s operational needs.

However, to improve the effectiveness of the High Anti-Corruption Court, the remaining Accounting Chamber recommendations also need to be implemented. Particularly, resolving the problem of having to restart criminal cases when a judge is replaced and introducing mechanisms to prevent abuse of procedural rights.

In addition, to strengthen HACC’s institutional capacity and improve the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts, TI Ukraine recommends:

• comprehensively improving legislation on statutes of limitations (by establishing additional grounds for suspending limitation periods, extending their duration, and changing the end point for calculating them);   
• abolishing the automatic closure of cases due to the expiration of pre-trial investigation time limits;
• revising the provisions on single-judge consideration and extending them to civil forfeiture cases;
• requiring mandatory special confiscation when approving plea agreements.

At the same time, the implementation of a significant portion of the recommendations that require legislative amendments falls within the remit of other bodies. For this reason, it is advisable for the Accounting Chamber to continue actively monitoring the status of their implementation and to respond appropriately in cases of delay or inaction by the responsible entities.