Bill restoring independence to Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies is passed following backlash

Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has passed a bill restoring independence to the country’s two powerful anti-corruption agencies, having passed a law placing them under the control of the presidential administration just last week, RBC-Ukraine reported on Thursday.

According to the Ukrainian government, the move to strip the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) of their independence was necessary to tackle growing Russian influence within the two bodies, but the controversial decision was seen by many as a power grab and led to the first major anti-government protests since the start of the war.

Following the public outcry and vocal criticism from Ukraine’s EU partners, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky backtracked within days and ordered the drafting of a new bill, which was written with the involvement of both NABU and SAPO. Both agencies later backed the new law, saying it would restore “all procedural powers and guarantees of independence”.

The Rada debate on the proposed legislation was broadcast live on Thursday, the first such broadcast since the beginning of the war, with 331 deputies voting in favour, nine abstentions and no deputies voting against the measure.

A small rally of protesters demanding that the independence of NABU and SAPO be restored was held in Kyiv’s Mariinsky Park, in front of the Verkhovna Rada building, while the debate was taking place.

The changes were welcomed by the European Commission, with a spokesperson telling reporters that the body was working with Zelensky’s government to ensure that its “concerns regarding the fight against corruption” in Ukraine were “correctly addressed”.

“We provide significant financial support to Ukraine and this is conditional to progress and transparency, judicial reform and democratic governance”, the commission spokesperson added.

Established at the insistence of Kyiv’s Western partners in the wake of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity in 2015, NABU and SAPO were both granted wide-ranging powers to freeze and confiscate assets as part of the campaign to weed out high-level corruption, and has opened cases against senior members of Zelensky’s government on multiple occasions.