Corruption in the 2023 Year — It’s Essentially Theft of Western Money

Corruption in the 2023 year — it’s essentially theft of Western money

Next year the whole Western world will be watching closely the results of the Ukrainian authorities’ fight against corruption. Because 60% of the national budget is support from allies — more precisely, the taxpayers’ money of Western countries.

This percentage will increase over the year. And without this money we will lose the war. It’s extremely simple, writes the outlet ZN.ua.

Under these conditions any theft from the budget is essentially theft of Western money. Stealing from the budget now undermines the trust not only of Western elites but of the societies and voters in our partner countries. That trust is the key to getting weapons and money.

Anyone who steals state money now is an internal enemy of the country. They must be dealt with accordingly.

Question: do they steal? Yes, they do. You can see it in some individual procurements. Is it a vertically organized scheme run by top political leadership? No, it doesn’t look like it.

Rather, it’s individual characters who can’t get enough. And it doesn’t matter whether they understand the consequences of their actions or simply don’t care. Any more-or-less significant corruption scandal that reaches global media could become a catastrophe for us. They will simply stop giving us money.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy understands how catastrophic the consequences of any loud corruption scandal would be, so he appears to be restraining the rapacious part of his circle.

At the same time neither the president nor society can guarantee that top officials won’t build new schemes during the war. We simply don’t have the ability to check them. After 24 February the authorities closed access to key registries, information from which was the basis of all corruption investigations.

Unethical judges haven’t gone anywhere, but some of their rulings and other important data began disappearing from the registry. In total more than a million court decisions have already been removed from public access, and new ones are hardly published.

Even more harmful to oversight is the closed declarations registry. In the first months of the war, the decision to cut off access to it entirely perhaps made sense.

But should declarations be hidden now? That’s a big question. Closed declarations of top officials certainly do not bring our victory closer. We are talking about those who already sit calmly on Bankova Street and nearby, not regional officials in occupied areas or the military. For the latter 100% should be exceptions, because we simply do not have the moral right to distract them from what’s happening at the front.

However, declarations were not only hidden. Members of parliament allowed themselves and others not to submit them at all, even to the closed registry. No declarations — no punishment for lying in them. Convenient, right?

That is why restoring officials’ declarations and reopening access to key state registries is one of the main tasks for next year. But the most important anticorruption battle will be defending NABU, SAP and VAKS.

Thanks to the appointment of Oleksandr Klymenko as head of the SAP, this agency in just the last few months has shown truly impressive results:

they reopened the “Rotterdam+” case and brought 15 new suspicions in it;

they announced suspicions in the Ukrnafta and Centrenergo cases, in schemes from which firms in Kolomoisky’s orbit profited. By the way, searches were conducted at the oligarch himself, and he was questioned by NABU at least twice, while VAKS arrested 657 million UAH on the accounts of a company linked to his structures;

they exposed a criminal organization in Odesa led by local operators Kaufman and Borukhovych, involving three deputy mayors of Odesa in the schemes. Mayor Trukhanov himself is currently listed as a witness but is already traveling to NABU for questioning;

they sent cases to court against MPs Trukhin, Kuzminy, Kolisnyk, Volynets and Kamelchuk;

they carried out searches in the office of the head of the Dnipropetrovsk OVA, Valentyn Reznichenko, and in a number of departments regarding tender manipulations;

they exposed former MP Maksym Mykytas attempting to give a record bribe of 22 million euros;

suspicions were filed against former head of the SFS Roman Nasirov, agribaron Oleh Bakhmatiuk, former NBU head Kyrylo Shevchenko, and former MP Oleksandr Hranovskyi;

they also sent the long-awaited case regarding Mezhyhirya, accusing Viktor Yanukovych and his son, to court.

The unethical part of Bankova and its “servants” understand perfectly well that this is only the beginning. So for them the question of survival becomes destroying or at least neutralizing anticorruption bodies.

For this, corrupt officials in power may try to dismiss Oleksandr Klymenko. Doing that now is very easy. It would only require a decision by a disciplinary commission controlled by the prosecutor general and an order from Andriy Kostin.

If the authorities dare to do this, it would be the end of NABU’s and SAP’s effectiveness. The duties of the chief anti-corruption prosecutor would in that case begin to be performed by Kostin himself and Klymenko’s current deputy Andriy Synyuk, whom Oleh Tatarov and Co. pushed for the position of head of the SAP.

If dismissing Klymenko fails, the corrupt will try to give the prosecutor general, the SBU, the DBR or the Pechersky court the right to take cases away from NABU. In fact, that’s how Bankova once saved Tatarov from prison. They then did it completely illegally. Now they will try to legalize the scheme through the Rada by amending the law.

Our main task as a society is not only to repel these attacks, but also, through legal changes, to protect the head of the SAP and all his successors from politically motivated dismissal. We must generally protect NABU/SAP/VAKS, their powers and key people. I am convinced that Western partners will be our allies in this matter. The same Western partners without whose money and weapons our victory over Russia is not possible.

Another internal front is judicial reform. The complete reboot of key judicial bodies — the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ), which we began back in 2021, became one of the main arguments for granting us EU candidate status. Whether negotiations on membership will start depends on the quality and success of implementing this reform. And here we face another battle. In January there will be a congress of judges where judges must elect eight HCJ members — without this the body cannot resume its work.

But the judicial mafia has completely different plans — they are not interested in restoring the HCJ’s work. Primarily because most of their protégés failed to pass the Ethics Council.

If the judicial mafia manages to block the appointment of new HCJ members, it will cost us another six months, or even at least a year. We cannot afford such luxury, because the HCJ is the only body that can dismiss or at least suspend a colluding judge, appoint or transfer judges to places where they are critically needed, or punish a judge for disciplinary violations.

At the beginning of 2023 we will also face the hot phase of the HQCJ competition. Recently the selection commission announced a list of 64 candidates chosen for the next stage who must pass interviews. We were somewhat disappointed to see certain surnames on that list, but we hope that commission members will make an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff and recommend the best candidates for appointment — there are enough good candidates in the competition. We will assist them in every possible way.

So I began this article by saying that we do not see examples of systemic corruption — the kind organized by the country’s top officials that siphons off huge flows of budget funds.

At the same time we see increasing signs of preparation to introduce such schemes in the postwar period. Part of the political class is already preparing to scavenge the money the West will allocate for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

As soon as these attempts become indecently many, we will have to stop them publicly. A big request to the authorities: don’t bring the situation to that point. This is exactly not the time for that…

Now imagine we win the war in 2023. And the money in question immediately starts flowing into Ukraine.

They will, of course, come in installments. Any attempt to steal them will lead to only one thing — we will not receive subsequent tranches. No country will give its citizens’ taxes to a government that will steal them.

So even if NABU catches the scoundrels, it won’t make us better off — we will already have lost the reconstruction funds. This is exactly one of those cases where it is far more important to prevent the crime than to punish it later.

The only way to avoid this scenario is to deprive the authorities of any influence over selecting contractors who will spend these funds. Certainly the authorities should decide what to build, but not who will do the work.

The funds that the West and other partners give for postwar reconstruction should not go directly into the general budget or any fund controlled by the authorities. They can flow through special World Bank or IMF programs or through a specially created fund under the control of the donors themselves.

I am far from thinking that in that case corruption would definitely disappear. But it would not be our problem. If people try to steal there and it’s exposed (and it will be exposed), we won’t care — it will not affect the amount of money for Ukraine.

And it is self-deception to think that some IT tools will protect these funds from embezzlement. They will help detect corruption — yes, but prevent thefts — certainly not.

Remember, the “Big Construction” cartel was cutting our taxes through the Prozorro system. Prozorro is undoubtedly the best IT solution in procurement. And did it help much? Exactly.

In summary. Officials who steal during the war are internal enemies because they jeopardize the Western support the country needs. Next year they will do everything to destroy NABU/SAP. These same people will block the restoration of electronic declarations and access to state registries. The judicial mafia will try to block the launch of the renewed High Council of Justice.

On the bright side — none of this will succeed. For the simple reason that their plans are obvious to both us and our Western partners. We clearly understand how we will counter them. And we know exactly on which trash heap of history these people will end up. Excuse my harsh language — you know how the times are.

Vitaliy Shabunin, Executive Director of the non-governmental organization Center for Combating Corruption, published in ZN.ua