Efficacy and Efficiency of a New System of Corruption Prevention in Ukraine (Part One)

One of the priorities for the European Union Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI) which is one of the biggest projects in Ukraine with financial support of the EU in the sphere of fight against corruption in the amount of 15.84 mil. Euro is to contribute institutional development of anti-corruption agencies. Some special state agencies on counteraction to corruption were established in 2015-2016. At the same time, establishment and initial activities of new institutions took place within strict political opposition with participation of interested oligarchs, heads of law enforcement agencies and judiciary.   

The National Anti-Corruption Agency did not provide any annual report on implementation of anti-corruption policy in 2018 which is required by Art. 20 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Prevention of Corruption’. This research uses alternative sources of information such as monitoring reports of non-governmental organizations, materials of journalist investigations, speeches of law experts, politicians and public officials, published reports of state agencies which perform functions related to prevention of corruption. The purpose of the article is to identify efficacy of a new system related to prevention of corruption since last 5 years particularly due to reforming of criminal justice agencies. 

Since the beginning of its work to June 2018 the National Anti-Corruption Agency checked only 331 declarations among 1 mil. which had been submitted by public officials. Among them the Anti-Corruption Agency detected incompliances in 45 declarations which means undeclared property. Officials who did not provide full information were represented by members of the parliament, six prosecutors, three low level public officials of central executive agencies. Such low indicators including other disadvantages in the work of the state agency prove the failure in the work of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.   

Following the results of work done by the National Agency of Ukraine for Finding, Tracing and Management of Assets Derived from Corruption and other Crimes (ARMA) found a full dependence of the Agency’s work on other state agencies (at legislative level) and all its activities result in preparation of requests to certain structures and as a result the question arises regarding true reasons for establishment of the Agency as it is now. Mechanism for obtaining necessary information by the Agency does not allow any efficiency which is expected for criminal proceedings. The author focuses also on political dependence of ARMA and admits that the reason for these violations are moral and professional qualities of people who manage the Agency.