Anti-corruption investigations in Ukraine show that the country’s institutions remain efficient despite Russia’s war, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Taras Kachka told Euronews.
Kachka, who’s in charge of the country’s EU integration, described the process as “the healthiest thing” in the country of some 44 million, which continues to defend itself from Russia’s all-out invasion, now well into its fifth year.
“Ukraine is now living through the war and the dramatic change of its political culture,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
“Something that was a problem for the accession of Ukraine in the past, so 10 years ago, 15 years ago. So corruption, systemic corruption, is now very dramatically and fast going into the past.”
Major anti-graft probes have recently sent shockwaves throughout Ukraine.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) are investigating a major scheme which allegedly involved laundering around €9 million between 2021 and 2025 through the construction of elite residential units in Kozyn, a wealthy suburb south of Kyiv.
Part of the financing is said to have come from funds obtained through corruption schemes around Ukraine’s state company Enerhoatom.
Among the suspects is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who has been released on €2.7million bail after spending four days in custody.
“This is exactly what the EU wants us to do, to clear government, to get rid of any corruptions, to ensure that the anti-corruption framework works, and it works,” Kachka told Euronews.
He said last year the NABU opened 737 cases, while there were 125 SAPO indictments against more than 200 people, and 93 sentences against 130 individuals by the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine.
“It means that it works, this anti-corruption framework works,” Kachka said.
Kachka also pointed out that this framework was completed and became fully operational in 2023, when Russia’s war was already raging “at fullest scale”.
And while admitting that the anti-corruption scandal is “still a scandal” which can be damaging for Ukraine’s reputation, he said Ukraine is not “looking for any excuses with the partners.”
“We do our homework with fullest accuracy possible,” Kachka stated.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs
NABU and SAPO were created in 2015 as part of pro-Western reforms following Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which ousted Ukraine’s former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
NABU investigates top-level corruption, and SAPO oversees and prosecutes its cases. Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court subsequently tries those cases.
The two institutions were established to independently investigate and prosecute leading Ukrainian officials suspected of graft, free from political influence or interference.
Corruption cases are supervised by the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, who is independent from Ukraine’s prosecutor general.
The creation of NABU and SAPO was one of the requirements set by the European Commission and International Monetary Fund for Ukraine’s visa liberalisation with the EU.
Last summer, Ukraine’s state security service SBU launched a series of raids on NABU as part of a sweeping investigation into suspected Russian infiltration.
Over a dozen employees were searched, and two detectives were detained.
The SBU said it had arrested one official at the NABU on suspicion of being a Russian spy and another over alleged business ties with Moscow. Other NABU officials had ties to a fugitive Ukrainian politician’s banned party, according to the state security service.
Both anti-corruption agencies refuted the claims made against their employees. The watchdogs also claimed that the SBU’s counterintelligence efforts were what they called “preparation” for the Ukrainian parliament amending the law and effectively eliminating the independence of the country’s anti-corruption institutions one month later.
Thousands took to the streets across Ukraine to protest the bill and call on Zelenskyy to veto it.