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On Tuesday night, in the largest public demonstration since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets of the capital to protest against a controversial new law that threatens to dismantle the country’s hard-won anti-corruption infrastructure.
Earlier in the day Ukraine’s Parliament voted 263 to 13 (with 13 abstentions) to pass the bill, which brings the nation’s two leading anti-corruption institutions under the direct authority of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General. Holding handmade placards with slogans like “No Corruption in government,” protestors urged Zelenskyy to veto the law and to refuse to sign his assent to it. Many were shocked when, in the evening, while the protests were ongoing, Zelenskyy ratified the bill with his signature.
Power Grab
The bill was initially unrelated to the work of the anti-corruption organisations and focused on “the specifics of pre-trial investigations” related to the disappearance of missing persons in Ukraine. However, its scope was radically altered by unexpected amendments introduced at the last minute during a second reading on Tuesday morning, which pulled the anti-corruption agencies into the bill’s purview according to sources inside the Parliament.
The amended bill confers broad new powers on Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, a political appointee chosen directly by the President, and grants him wide-ranging authority over the country’s two independent anti-corruption agencies. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), created as an independent agency following the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014, is responsible for pre-trial investigations of members of Parliament, Government officials, prosecutors, and leaders of the National Bank.
It passes cases to the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office (SAPO), which oversees investigations and prosecutions, representing the state when cases are brought to trial. Freedom from Government influence and exclusive jurisdiction over cases have been vital cornerstones of both NABU and SAPO’s independence— as well as the agencies’ ability to actually bring cases.
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Under the new powers granted by the bill, the Prosecutor General has the authority to appoint and dismiss SAPO prosecutors, to order it to close investigations into top-ranking “Category A” officials and to take over plea negotiations with those who are charged. The Prosecutor General also gains access to NABU with the power to issue mandatory instructions to both agencies, including compelling NABU to hand over materials uncovered during investigations and to reassign cases to other law enforcement agencies under the direct control of the Government.
For example, the case of former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) employee and advisor to the President’s Office, Artem Shylo, who was accused in 2024 of embezzling funds from Ukraine’s national rail company, could be reassigned to the SSU and overseen internally and without scrutiny.
According to Transparency International, Zelenskyy’s signing the bill into law takes meaningful power out of the hands of the NABU and SAPO, bringing Ukraine’s only independent anti-corruption agencies with the power to investigate and prosecute cases under the control of the President, who can, through the Prosecutor General, influence or even dismiss investigations and trials of corruption.
Why Now?
The addition of provisions which curtail the powers of Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption bodies follows the formal naming of Deputy Prime Minister, Oleksii Chernyshov, as a suspect in a high-profile corruption case regarding a scheme in which a Kyiv property developer illegally claimed a plot of land to build a residential complex. According to NABU, Chernyshov and his associates received kickbacks totalling more than 14 million hryvnias ($340,000) for undervaluing land plots to be purchased by developer Serhii Kopystyra between 2021 and 2022 when Chernyshov was Minister for Communities and Territories. The scheme reportedly cost the state one billion hryvnias ($24 million).
Chernyshov is a close political ally and personal friend of Zelenskyy. According to reporting by Ukrainska Pravda, he was the only cabinet minister invited to attend an intimate gathering celebrating the President’s birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Speaking to the Kyiv Independent last month, Olena Shcherban, deputy executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, claimed that NABU and SAPO had “reached the immediate circle of the President’s ‘family,’” predicting Zelenskyy’s office would go on the offensive against the anti-corruption institutions responsible for the investigation. “I am sure we will see both attempts to make harmful changes to the law and personal attacks on the SAPO head,” she said.
Earlier this month, the home of former Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov was raided and searched by the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI). According to the Financial Times, investigators believe Kubrakov may have been the whistleblower responsible for bringing the Deputy Prime Minister’s alleged corruption to the attention of NABU.
Kubrakov has denied the allegation, but a person close to him has called the search “revenge” for his perceived involvement in the case against Chernyshov. Kubrakov, himself accused of helping another MP defraud entrepreneurs of 14.5 million hryvnias ($346,000), is one of several prominent figures whose homes have been raided by the SBI in recent weeks.
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On 11th July, the home of Vitaliy Shabunin, co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre, was also raided by armed police without, according to the centre’s executive director Daria Kaieniuk, the proper court documents to allow the search.
Shabunin is one of Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption activists and a member of the country’s armed forces. He was charged with evading military service and fraud relating to a business trip to the National Agency on Corruption Prevention in the early days of the war, whic