Ukraine lost $20 million to corruption over three years, State Bureau of Investigation reports

Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), an anti-corruption institution created in 2018 to investigate crimes of top officials, has reported that over the three years of its work, civil servants stole UAH 524 mn ($20 mn) from the state budget. This figure is based on the criminal proceedings against 1,412 civil servants that the institution sent to courts. The SBI reported that it arrested UAH 186 mn ($7 mn) worth of assets and that it documented UAH 41 mn ($1.6 mn) of bribes received by civil servants over these three years. The civil servants that the institution is investigating include:

• 1 Deputy Minister;
• 1 A-category civil servant;
• 2 judges;
• 438 police officers;
• 33 prosecutors;
• 1 SBI (sic!) employee;
• 13 employees of Ukraine's Security Service;
• 76 taxpayers;
• 125 customs officers;
• 99 border guards;
• 48 employees of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine;
• 128 employees of the State Forest Guard;
• 12 employees of the State Fisheries Agency;
• 9 employees of the State Migration Service of Ukraine;
• 17 employees of Ukraine's State Emergency Service;
• 8 National Guard employees;
• 107 servicemen;
• 294 other persons.

The corruption crimes being investigated include systemic corruption of Kyiv authorities, including illegal land plot allocation, probes into the former deputy head of the State Service of Geology and Subsoil, former director of one of the departments of Ukraine's state gas provider Naftogaz, senior officials from the state Asset Recovery and Management Agency, fraud involving protected areas in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, abuse of ex-senior officials of the Energy Ministry, bribes received by an official of the Ukrtransbezpeka transport security agency, and the State Tax Service of Zakarpattia Oblast.

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