The Head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), Viktor Pavlushchyk, has made his first regional trip in his position. The NACP team visited Vinnytsia, where they met with city and regional authorities, educators, students and NGOs.
The NACP Head signed the Declaration on Building Integrity of Local Self-Government Bodies with Vinnytsia Mayor Serhiy Morgunov.
“Vinnytsia should not only retain the status of the most comfortable city in Ukraine for living, but also strive for leadership in transparency, integrity and anti-corruption activities. Vinnytsia became the tenth city in Ukraine with which the NACP signed the Declaration on Building Integrity of Local Self-Government Bodies. This is a step towards increasing the level of openness in the community, creating a corruption-free environment that will contribute to the development of the city,” said Pavlushchyk.
He reminded that Vinnytsia became the first city to open offline Integrity Hubs from the NACP Integrity Office in 2023. The Hubs are currently operating at Gymnasium #24 and Lyceum #4, and have engaged more than 30 schools in the city. Viktor Pavlushchyk also talked to teachers of Lyceum No. 7.
With the city and regional authorities, the NACP Head discussed key areas of cooperation, prevention of violations, elimination of gaps in legislation, further optimization of the declaration submission process, transparency of decision-making and procurement, avoidance of corruption risks in the most important areas, problematic issues in the work of the register of violators, etc.
Vinnytsia Regional Council became the second regional council in Ukraine (after Kharkiv) to sign the Declaration on Building Integrity of Local Self-Government Bodies with the NACP.
During the meeting, Vyacheslav Sokolovyi, Chairman of Vinnytsia Oblast Council, noted that for three years the oblast council has been ranked first in the transparency rating of councils. In February of this year, the Vinnytsia Regional Council approved the Anti-Corruption Program for 2024-2026, which was developed with the support of the NACP.
According to Viktor Pavlushchyk, Vinnytsia region is among the regions with the lowest number of full audits of officials' declarations: 11 have been launched, three of which have already been completed (for comparison, 155 in Kyiv, 37 in Odesa, and 32 in Kyiv region).
The issues of improving anti-corruption legislation and the tools developed by the NACP to minimize corruption risks were discussed with the Head of Vinnytsia Regional Military Administration Serhii Borzov.
NACP Head Viktor Pavlushchyk also met with students of the Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi Vinnytsia State Pedagogical University and spoke about the activities of Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure and his own experience in the field of anti-corruption. Iryna Chahovets, Head of the NACP's Integrity Office, presented the course “Anti-Corruption and Integrity”, which will be taught at the university next academic year.
The purpose of the NACP regional travel project is to establish a dialogue with local and regional authorities, NGOs, build integrity in local governments, implement the State Anti-Corruption Program for 2023-2025, and conduct educational and informational work. As part of the regional travel project, NACP representatives have already visited Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Chernivtsi, Zhytomyr, and Ivano-Frankivsk.
