U.S. ambassador calls for creation of anti-corruption court

The recent revelations of the electronic assets and income declarations, accompanied by the public outrage, further confirms the need to expand the authority of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and create its own anti-corruption court “as soon as possible,” U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told the dt.ua news site in an interview published on Nov. 4. “We are ready to support the efforts of the Ukrainian government to fight corruption and we understand that the electronic asset declaration system is the beginning, and not the end of a process of exposing and halting corrupt activity,” she said. 

Zenon Zawada: The launch of an anti-corruption court – which is being demanded by both the U.S. and the IMF — will be the next challenge of the Poroshenko administration. However, MPs with the Poroshenko Bloc have already submitted bills to parliament that would give the prosecutor general the ability to take criminal cases away from the bureau. And Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko indicated in late September he would act against enhancing the bureau’s authority, particularly in the critical sphere of determining which criminal cases it would review. So we expect some resistance by the Poroshenko administration, just as it has resisted some other reform initiatives demanded by the West.