Civil confiscation of unjustified assets allows property to be recovered into the state budget without the need to prove the fact of a criminal offense, and enables faster seizure of illicit property from officials compared to criminal proceedings. This is a relatively young mechanism that has been operating since October 2019.
Since then, the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) has issued 28 rulings, nearly 60% of which are based on materials from the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP). Another 23 cases worth nearly UAH 166.5 million are currently under the court’s consideration.
In total, since 2023, HACC has granted 17 claims by the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) for civil confiscation based on NACP materials amounting to over UAH 75 million. The HACC Appeals Chamber has upheld first-instance court rulings worth UAH 53.47 million.
In addition, more than 50 NACP cases are being reviewed by SAPO prosecutors to decide whether to file a claim with HACC to declare assets unjustified and recover them for the benefit of the state.
In just over 8 months of 2025 alone, NACP referred 43 cases to SAPO, including one claim based on 2022 materials, four based on 2023 materials, nine based on 2024 materials, and 13 claims based on 2025 materials. SAPO filed 27 claims seeking to declare assets unjustified.
HACC has issued rulings on civil confiscation amounting to over UAH 43 million.
For instance, in June, HACC granted a SAPO claim based on NACP materials and declared unjustified assets worth UAH 8.5 million belonging to a married couple—customs officers—and their son, a district council official.
In August, HACC confiscated more than UAH 5.6 million from a former head of a district council in Rivne region and declared unjustified assets worth nearly UAH 3.3 million belonging to the head of the South-Eastern Interregional Department for the Execution of Criminal Sentences of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine.
In September, based on NACP materials, UAH 1.6 million was recovered from a prosecutor of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
During this same period, the HACC Appeals Chamber upheld rulings worth more than UAH 34 million.
In particular, these included:
- the recovery of over UAH 5 million from a State Migration Service official;
- the confiscation of an apartment belonging to the family of a senior National Police official;
- granting a SAPO prosecutor’s appeal against a HACC ruling to declare unjustified the assets of a National Police official’s family and recover them for the benefit of the state.
Currently, 23 more civil confiscation cases are pending. Among them:
- UAH 4.2 million may be recovered from the family of a former deputy in Sumy;
- over UAH 3 million from a deputy minister of environmental protection;
- UAH 7 million from a former head of a Kyiv district state administration.
The civil confiscation mechanism is gradually proving its effectiveness: the number of cases and the amounts of confiscated assets are growing, contributing to the enrichment of the state budget and cleansing the government of dishonest officials.
It should be recalled that the Government approved an NACP-drafted bill “On Amendments to the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine and the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine to Improve the Procedure for Consideration of Cases by HACC.” If the NACP-initiated changes come into force, court rulings will be issued much faster, thereby ensuring that the state budget will be replenished more quickly with assets confiscated from corrupt activities as a result of lifestyle monitoring and full declaration audits.
