The National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) initiated a roundtable discussion to discuss problematic issues of qualifying actions of individuals for false declaration and illicit enrichment. The event was attended by representatives of the Supreme Court, the High Anti-Corruption Court, the Kyiv Court of Appeal, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, regional prosecutor's offices, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigation, the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Police of Ukraine, and its territorial units.
"We all work with limited resources, and the National Agency is doing everything possible to ensure that the verification of declarations and monitoring of declarants' lifestyles are carried out as efficiently as possible. Accordingly, we strive to unify approaches and objectively assess the actions of persons for false declarations and illicit enrichment, and this is possible only when there is interaction and effective cooperation with operational units, pre-trial investigation bodies, and courts. It is extremely important to develop a common vision on these issues for use in prosecutorial and investigative activities, as well as in the work of the National Agency,” said Mykola Korneliuk, Deputy Head of the NACP.
The participants discussed 14 problematic issues regarding the qualification of actions of persons for false declaration, in particular, for failure to declare property, including unfinished buildings, indicating false data on the value of objects, income, cryptocurrency, valuable movable property, monetary assets, financial liabilities, expenses, etc.
"For the third year in a row, the NACP financial control team has been bringing together representatives of pre-trial investigation bodies and judges specializing in investigating and reviewing cases related to declaration and illicit enrichment, as well as searching for unjustified assets, to agree on the principles of qualifying the actions of persons for false declaration. In previous years, we have developed such common positions, including on the standard for proving the unreliability of data in the declaration on cash that is not confirmed by legal sources of origin, cryptocurrencies, and as a result, we already have positive court practice in this category of cases. Unified positions on the qualification of actions of persons allow the authorized persons of the National Agency to focus on the judicial perspective of bringing a person to justice for false declaration based on the results of the investigation of criminal proceedings initiated on the basis of NACP materials at the stage of conducting inspections,” said Yulia Kulikova, Head of the NACP Department of Full Inspections.
As a result of the event, the participants agreed on the position regarding the qualification of actions of persons for declaring false information under Article 366-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, Part 4 of Article 172-6 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses.
The participants of the event also discussed the issues of qualification of actions of persons and peculiarities of detecting signs of illicit enrichment and unjustified assets, as well as identified ways to improve the interaction of the National Agency with other bodies in the implementation of financial control measures, search for unjustified assets, including those located abroad, in order to return them to Ukraine.
Based on the results of the roundtable, the relevant materials will be sent to the participating authorities to be taken into account in the prosecutorial and investigative activities.
The event was organized with the support of the project “Promoting Integrity in the Public Sector (Pro-Integrity)”, funded jointly by USAID and UK International Dment.
