Ukraine's stability in the current geopolitical realities depends on our ability to protect our freedom and build a just, citizen-oriented state with zero tolerance for corruption.
This was emphasized by Viktor Pavlushchyk, Head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), at the opening of the panel discussion "Anti-Corruption Resilience of Ukraine: Challenges and Mechanisms" at the VIII Kharkiv International Legal Forum.
“The fight against corruption should be based primarily on preventing this negative phenomenon, particularly by reducing corruption risks and implementing mechanisms that make corrupt practices impossible. Preventing corruption is not a one-time campaign; it must be systemic,” said the NACP Head.
He emphasized that the Anti-Corruption Strategy and the State Anti-Corruption Program are powerful tools for preventing corruption, and the NACP, as a policy-making body, ensures their implementation.
Deputy Heads of the NACP Mykola Korneliuk and Serhii Hupiak spoke in more detail about the preventive anti-corruption measures implemented by the NACP.
Mykola Korneliuk focused on the mechanisms of financial control as an effective anti-corruption safeguard. These include lifestyle monitoring, full verification of declarations, and special inspections. In the area of declarations, the NACP is currently working on two priority areas: ensuring convenient submission of declarations and quality verification.
“To fulfill these tasks, the NACP has now introduced automatic filling of the draft declaration and automatic verification of the completed document for declarants. NACP inspections are based on logical and arithmetic control, optimizing this process and allowing a focus on full inspections of declarations with the highest corruption risks,” explained the Deputy Head of the NACP.
Since the beginning of the year, the NACP has conducted full inspections of 433 declarations, 210 of which revealed signs of illicit enrichment and unjustified assets totaling UAH 18,883.2 million.
“Lifestyle monitoring, which establishes whether the standard of living of the declaring entities and their family members is consistent with their property and income, revealed facts of illicit enrichment worth UAH 479 million and false information in declarations worth UAH 22 million over the same period. In these cases, 7 individuals were notified of suspicion of illicit enrichment, and 6 lawsuits were filed to recognize their assets as unjustified and recover them for the state. Special checks, in turn, prevented the appointment of 284 people to public service positions who provided false information about their income and assets,” added Mykola Korneliuk.
During the discussion, Serhii Hupiak spoke about mechanisms for minimizing corruption risks in the area of reconstruction during and after the war.
He noted that the NACP is currently focused on two types of procedures: compensation for damage to facilities and the repair, reconstruction, or construction of new facilities. In 2023-2024, the National Agency modeled 8 common corruption risks and analyzed the implementation of a pilot project to restore war-affected settlements, identifying the top 10 risks in the project. For all identified risks, the NACP provided comprehensive recommendations to minimize them.
“We are discussing the need to approve a terminology base in the industry, establish clear requirements at the legislative level for the prioritization of reconstruction projects, create a methodology for selecting such projects, establish a specific procedure for calculating their cost, and publish information on estimates for each reconstruction object in a unified form. These recommendations, if implemented, will help prevent corruption schemes and negative reputational, social, and economic consequences. They will also assist the state in ensuring clarity and transparency in the ‘rules of the game’ during facility restoration,” emphasized Serhii Hupiak.
The Kharkiv International Legal Forum was founded in 2017 as an open international platform for discussing issues relevant to the global legal community. The Forum's mission is to engage leading specialists and experts from different countries in a transparent dialogue to develop common approaches to solving urgent legal problems in the context of globalization and eliminating legal barriers to global sustainable development.
