The NACP activates the monitoring of the lifestyle of officials and deputies with the request of citizens

17.02.2023

During the period of martial law, almost all mechanisms of financial control were put on hold. Declarations have become optional, and full verifications of declarations have been suspended. Despite the fact that the public insists on the restoration of financial control, and the petition to the President gained the necessary 25,000 votes in just a few days, the relevant draft law, registered by parliamentarians back in the fall, has not yet been considered by the Verkhovna Rada. Although declarations can be submitted freely, officials and deputies are in no hurry to report to Ukrainians. Only 1,366 judges, seven MPs’ and one current minister submitted their annual declaration for 2021. "The statistics of filing declarations for 2021 and 2022 are disappointing. We are following one negative trend — the more power and opportunities for corruption a certain category has, the fewer declarations are filed among them. The number of submitted declarations among top officials or MPs’, judges of higher courts is generally close to zero. But we cannot simply wait for the parliamentarians to restore the duty to declare when corruption scandals break out in the country one after another. That is why the Agency uses another mechanism of financial control of the wealth of officials and MPs’ — lifestyle monitoring to partially compensate for full financial control"? - said Artem Sytnyk, Deputy Head of the NACP. Citizens can report known facts to the NACP so that we can check any public official to see if his standard of living is consistent with legitimate income. What should be done for this? Contact the NACP via e-mail address: info@nazk.gov.ua with information about the possible discrepancy between the standard of living of a public servant and his income. In order for your message to be considered faster, we recommend:

indicate in the subject of the letter "Information for lifestyle monitoring";
provide actual data about cars, houses, trips or other assets that the official or deputy has purchased, but you believe that the official sources of income of this public official do not allow him such purchases or standard of living.

What is the difference between initiating monitoring and reporting corruption? In the case of reporting corruption, certain requirements must be met in order to obtain whistleblower status. In order to initiate monitoring, compliance with these conditions is not mandatory. For example, you can receive information about the discrepancy between the standard of living of an official and his income, regardless of whether you received this information during the performance of your official duties or not. So, anyone can initiate lifestyle monitoring, but only someone who received information during professional activity can declare corruption. You can read more about whistleblowers at the link. More details about the statistics of declarations are here.

The NACP activates the monitoring of the lifestyle of officials and deputies with the request of citizens