On October 18, the funds for the reward to the corruption whistleblower were transferred from the account of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP). This is the second payment of a reward for reporting corruption in the history of the Ukrainian whistleblowing institution. It was made on the basis of the decision of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) No. 991/2288/21 of October 2, 2023.
The case concerned an attempt to bribe the heads of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). They were offered USD 6 million for closing the criminal proceedings under Part 3 of Article 209, Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, in which the former Minister of Ecology was a suspect.
NABU was investigating a corruption crime under Part 5 of Article 27, Part 4 of Article 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The materials concerning the former Minister were separated into a separate proceeding (Article 27(3), Article 369(4) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). In total, four people were involved in the case. All of them have now been issued sentences.
In October 2023, the HACC approved the last plea agreement in the case, concluded between the SAPO prosecutor and the former First Deputy Head of the Kyiv City Tax Service, and at the same time approved the payment of a reward to the whistleblower.
The court found that the whistleblower had actively contributed to the disclosure of the corruption crime, reported it outside the agreement and was not an accomplice, and ordered the State Treasury to pay a reward of almost UAH 13.3 million.
"In this high-impact case, the institution of whistleblowing, in synergy with the effective work of anti-corruption agencies, demonstrated its effectiveness at the level of top-level corruption. Today, we have HACC decisions with verdicts against all the subjects of the proceedings, and the whistleblower in the case received a statutory reward. It is also significant that the court applied special confiscation in the case. The amount of unlawful benefit in the amount of USD 6 million was one of the highest ever. The entire amount was transferred to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2022,” said NACP Head Viktor Pavlushchyk.
The first payment to a whistleblower in the history of Ukraine was made on October 4, 2024. The remuneration was paid in accordance with the decision of the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court of November 9, 2023 in case No. 991/2197/224.
The possibility of rewarding corruption whistleblowers was introduced in 2019. According to Art. 53-7 of the Law of Ukraine “On Prevention of Corruption”, a whistleblower may receive 10% of the monetary value of the subject matter of a corruption crime or the amount of damage caused to the state by the crime after a court verdict of guilty. However, the amount of the reward cannot exceed three thousand minimum wages established at the time of the crime. So far, the courts have made two positive decisions on payments. Both of these decisions have now been fully implemented.
You can read more about the current development of the whistleblowing institution in Ukraine, the results of the first year of the Whistleblower Reporting Portal and what further legislative changes are needed here. More about the need to regulate the status of a whistleblower in criminal proceedings can be found here.
