We continue to summarize the four-year work of the NACP 2.0 team. One of the achievements of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) in 2020-2023 is the launch of its anti-corruption expertise.
According to the Law of Ukraine "On Prevention of Corruption", the National Agency may conduct, on its own initiative and in accordance with the Procedure established by it, an anti-corruption expertise of draft legal acts submitted to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (VRU) and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (CMU). However, until 2020, the legislatively defined mechanism of anti-corruption expertise was not in place. There was also no anti-corruption expertise in draft regulatory legal acts (RLAs).
"After the NACP team was renewed, the anti-corruption expertise was rebooted. In 2020, we started by developing and approving the Methodology and Procedure for conducting an anti-corruption expert review of draft legislative acts submitted to the government and parliament. We also developed checklists for determining the need to conduct an expert review of draft regulations and established cooperation with the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Justice," said Iaroslav Liubchenko, Acting Head of the NACP.
Subsequently, the CMU Regulations were amended to include a new section, "Anti-Corruption Expertise of the NACP", which established the obligation of the draft regulatory legal acts (RLAs) to send them to the National Agency to determine the need for anti-corruption expertise.
The NACP developed a methodological guideline, "Anti-Corruption Commissioner's Review of Draft Acts of Public Sector Organization" and held a number of training events in different regions of Ukraine.
Cooperation with NGOs, business associations, and individual experts was initiated to report corruption risks in draft regulations, taking into account stakeholders' positions during the anti-corruption expertise.
In order to develop the area of anti-corruption expertise and provide practical advice and recommendations for avoiding corruption norms when drafting regulations, the National Agency has developed a training program and materials for conducting training for drafters of regulations, MPs, their assistants, and expert NGOs. The recommendations are available in the guide "How to Write a Legal Act Without Corruption".
In total, in 2020-2023, the NACP monitored almost 13 thousand draft legal acts and conducted 370 anti-corruption examinations in the areas of administrative services, licensing, corporate governance at state-owned enterprises, defense and public procurement, compensation for damage caused by Russian aggression, reconstruction of Ukraine, taxes and fees during wartime, etc.
Over the four years of active use of the anti-corruption expertise tool, the NACP has identified more than a thousand corruption factors and provided almost 1,500 recommendations for their elimination.
"Anti-corruption expertise, introduced in 2020, is an effective tool for preventing corruption and achieving the main goal of creating and functioning transparent legislation in the country. During this time, the drafters of legal acts have taken into account 97% of the recommendations provided by the NACP in their conclusions. These figures demonstrate the effectiveness of anti-corruption expertise," said Olena Kryvoshei, Head of the NACP's Department for Corruption Risk Mitigation and Anti-Corruption Expertise.
The analytical report on the results of the NACP's work for four years (2020-2023) is available here.
