The National Agency, together with experts from the Centre of Policy and Legal Reform and with the support of the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine, analysed judicial practice in prosecutions for administrative offences related to corruption between 2014 and 2024, and prepared and presented a report on its findings.
This is the first analytical study in Ukraine covering data for a period of more than ten years.
The results of the study show that the vast majority (approximately 72%) of all cases involved violations of financial control requirements (Article 172-6 of the Code of Administrative Offences), the most common of which was the late submission of declarations without valid reasons. Another 25% of cases during the period concerned conflicts of interest (Article 172-7 of the Code of Administrative Offences). The smallest number of cases brought before the courts concerned failure to take measures to combat corruption (Article 172-9 of the Code of Administrative Offences).
Over 11 years, more than 32,000 people were brought to administrative responsibility for corruption-related offences. The dynamics of imposing administrative penalties generally correlates with the number of cases considered: in 2018-2021, there was an increase, followed by a significant decrease, which is associated with the suspension of the declaration process after the introduction of martial law in Ukraine. In total, more than 60% of the persons whose cases were considered received the main penalty in the form of a fine.
It is important to note that cases were most often closed for three reasons:
- insignificance of the offence;
- absence of an event/composition of the offence;
- expiry of the time limits for imposing administrative penalties.
At the same time, additional penalties in the form of confiscation of property or money were applied extremely rarely – only to 1.5% of persons brought to justice, mainly under Article 172-4 of the Code of Administrative Offences (violation of restrictions on combining and combining with other types of activities). Even less frequently, courts deprived individuals of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities (only 0.2% of cases from the total pool). Thus, despite the mandatory nature of these sanctions under the law, in practice, additional penalties are rarely applied.
It is interesting to note that within the analysis of administrative offences related to corruption, it was found that appellate courts reviewed about 9% of first instance court decisions, with more than half of them left unchanged (52%).
The full text of the report is available at: https://cutt.ly/ttiMUcgH
Presentation 1 (analysis of court statistics): https://cutt.ly/8tiM8YeI
Presentation 2 (analysis of legislation): https://cutt.ly/0tiM4MAS
Presentation 3 (analysis of judicial practice): https://cutt.ly/6tiM53MA
Video recording of the discussion of the research results is available at: https://surl.li/agkmla
