Ukraine courts fail to recover funds from corruption cases

Ukrainian courts failed to recover any significant
amount of funds from the corruption cases they heard this summer, the Marlin
Project activist group reported on its Facebook page on Sept. 11, citing
statistics from the State Treasury Service. The courts collected UAH 4,432 (USD
166) during May-August from “corruption and corruption-related violations,” the
project reported. For 5M18, such collections reached UAH 61,328 (USD 2,284),
yet the Ukrainian government set the goal of collecting UAH 4.7 bln (USD 173
mln) for such violations as part of the 2018 budget.

Zenon Zawada: It’s not
clear how many of these court cases reached criminal conviction during these
three months, but it’s not likely to be many. Needless to say, this illustrates
just how deep Ukraine’s problem with corruption is. Not only is the state
budget being deprived of desperately needed funds, but the courts are failing
to recover even a fraction of them.

The current creation of the independent High
Anti-Corruption Court is a critical step towards fighting this corruption. Yet
the court’s work could be undermined. Current government leaders have shown
they don’t have the political will to fight corruption in a meaningful way and
could find loopholes to undermine the court’s activity.

Meanwhile, the independent corruption investigators
and prosecutors (also mandated by the IMF) are mired in political conflict,
also accusing each other of corruption and avoiding responsibility. For
investors, Ukraine is still a risky place to do business.