Ukrainian MPs on Tuesday, July 22, approved amendments to remove the independent statuses of two anti-corruption bodies in the war-torn country, a day after an official working in one of the agencies was arrested. Ukraine has stepped up its anti-graft measures over the past decade in a bid to join the EU, but corruption scandals continue to plague the country, even after the Russian invasion.
Despite widespread criticism from NGOs and rights groups, Ukraine's parliament voted 263 to 13 to place two government anti-corruption agencies, the NABU and SAPO, under the direct authority of the Prosecutor General, who is appointed by the president. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) finds and investigates instances of corruption among state institutions, while the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) prosecutes corruption.
The EU said earlier that it was "concerned about Ukraine's recent action with regard to its anti-corruption institutions," emphasising that the European body "provides significant financial assistance to Ukraine, conditional on progress in transparency, judicial reform and democratic governance."
The Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Ukrainian NGO, said that the law essentially made the anti-corruption agencies meaningless as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr "Zelensky's Prosecutor General will stop investigations into all of the president's friends."
On Monday, law enforcement officers conducted large-scale raids at the NABU, detaining one employee on suspicion of spying for Russia.
The NABU began work in 2015, after a 2014 pro-European protest movement dubbed the Revolution of Dignity, as part of reforms designed to move Kyiv closer to Europe as it fought Moscow-backed separatists in its east.
Transparency International's Ukraine office called the raids an "attempt by the authorities to undermine the independence of Ukraine's post-Revolution of Dignity anti-corruption institutions." Transparency International ranked Ukraine 105 out of 180 countries in its "corruption perceptions index" in 2024, up from 144 in 2013.