{"id":36820,"date":"2025-09-08T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/?p=36820"},"modified":"2025-09-18T17:18:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T14:18:49","slug":"police-2012-and-corrupt-procurement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/police-2012-and-corrupt-procurement\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s wrong with the law on business protection? Tetiana Shevchuk from Anti-Corruption Action Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><i><a href=\"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/cesukraine\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cWhat\u2019s Up With the Economy?<\/a>\u201d<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0is a podcast by the Centre for Economic Strategy in cooperation with Hromadske Radio, supported by PrivatBank.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every week, hosts <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/experts\/anhelina-zavadetska\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anhelina Zavadetska<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/experts\/maksym-samoiliuk-en\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maksym Samoiliuk<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> talk with experts, entrepreneurs, analysts, and government officials about what is happening with Ukraine\u2019s economy.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the podcast is held in Ukrainian, we decided to summarise each issue with the most important insights.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the latest episode of the podcast, we discuss how Ukrainian businesses have come under pressure from law enforcement agencies, whether draft law No. 12439 can truly protect entrepreneurs, and what risks it poses for society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our guest \u2014 <\/span><b>Tetiana Shevchuk<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Head of International Relations at the Anti-Corruption Action Centre.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019ve captured the most important takeaways for our English-speaking audience:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>What does \u201cpressure on business\u201d mean in practice?<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the Ukrainian context, \u201cpressure on business\u201d does not mean stricter regulation or higher taxes \u2014 it refers to law enforcement agencies abusing their power to block or paralyse companies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tetiana explains that pressure on businesses in Ukraine often takes the form of criminal cases, harassment of executives, property seizures, frozen accounts, and suspended activities. This, in turn, blocks normal operations, generates huge losses, and forces companies to spend heavily on legal defence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since the start of the full-scale invasion, this problem has only worsened. Alongside economic challenges, businesses now face growing interference from security services \u2014 epitomised by the figure of the \u201cmajor\u201d from law enforcement \u2014 who can suddenly disrupt or paralyse their work.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere were presidential promises, numerous advisory boards and forums where everyone assured that things would improve. But the reality is: today everything is fine, and tomorrow a criminal case is opened against an entrepreneur for an act committed 10 years ago, or all accounts are frozen \u2014 and we have to start all over again.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>Why could amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code create more problems than they solve?<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At first glance, the idea looks like an attempt to give businesses more protection. But according to Shevchuk, the whole approach is flawed:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe have two football teams playing against each other \u2014 supposedly equal, meaning business and law enforcement. But when one of the teams \u2014 law enforcement \u2014 is playing a \u2018fixed match,\u2019 constantly breaking the rules and even having the referee on their side, changing the rules of the game won\u2019t help. We can rewrite the Criminal Procedure Code twice or three times, but in the end, everything will still work the same way.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The proposed amendments could undermine not only entrepreneurs but society as a whole. If adopted, they would risk leaving critical cases uninvestigated \u2014 not just corruption, but also crimes against life and health, environmental violations, and other serious offences. In effect, the changes would weaken accountability mechanisms across the board, eroding protection for citizens and the public interest.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tetiana recalls that Ukrainian society once consciously chose a different approach:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe as a society once consciously chose a different approach: we agreed it\u2019s better to overload the system with case registrations than to have a situation where a crime isn\u2019t registered and a victim doesn\u2019t get justice. Now we are being brought back to the 2012 standard, when an investigator would again decide: did we provide enough evidence that our competitor smuggled goods or not; is there enough proof in a journalistic investigation about corruption or not.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Her conclusion is clear: the draft law should be rejected, and only those provisions that are truly needed by business \u2014 for example, regarding asset seizures or investigators\u2019 liability \u2014 should be discussed separately.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>Can anti-corruption institutions (e.g., the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU)\/Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor&#8217;s Office (SAPO) help honest businesses?<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While anti-corruption bodies don\u2019t work directly with most companies, they do change the overall environment:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cNABU and SAPO are more about restoring justice. Businesses may not see a direct impact on their operations, but these institutions change the climate and the practices. When NABU and SAPO began investigating economic crimes, they transformed investigative methods and introduced many approaches that were later adopted by ESBU, the police, and other agencies.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>For example, NABU and SAPO even have a special department that investigates only Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways). It\u2019s such a massive state enterprise that it requires a large number of detectives to oversee its procurement. As a result, those who previously couldn\u2019t even enter Ukrzaliznytsia\u2019s fuel tenders saw that, after NABU\u2019s investigations, procurement started to be conducted properly. This sector felt the impact of their work.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NABU and SAPO are restoring a sense of justice inside the country. But justice is also needed internationally: Russia must pay for the damage caused. That\u2019s why we asked Tetiana about the prospects of confiscating frozen Russian assets.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><b>Russian assets: why the decision is inevitable, but not fast<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Shevchuk stresses that confiscation of frozen Russian funds is only a matter of time:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ll see it in 2026. But sooner or later, we will come to this decision. Because there is no other resource, and the war continues, and the damage is real.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Currently, the EU is discussing the option of a trust fund that would invest the frozen money and generate profits for Ukraine\u2019s support:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey say that Ursula von der Leyen herself has joined the discussions. For now, the EU is leaning towards creating a trust fund that will invest these assets more aggressively, manage them, and maximise returns \u2014 not just 2\u20133% a year, but bigger sums that can be channelled into Ukraine.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">__________________________________________________________<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/cesukraine\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><b><i>\u201cWhat\u2019s Up With the Economy?\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a podcast by the Centre for Economic Strategy in cooperation with Hromadske Radio, supported by PrivatBank.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The podcast is available in Ukrainian on different platforms by <a href=\"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/cesukraine\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the link<\/a>. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s Up With the Economy?\u201d\u00a0is a podcast by the Centre for Economic Strategy in cooperation with Hromadske Radio, supported by PrivatBank. Every week, hosts Anhelina Zavadetska and Maksym Samoiliuk talk with experts, entrepreneurs, analysts, and government officials about what is happening with Ukraine\u2019s economy. While the podcast is held in Ukrainian, we decided to summarise [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[666,200,143],"tags":[552],"experts":[462,525],"news_type":[138],"class_list":["post-36820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-news-list-en","category-home-news-en","tag-rule-of-law-en","experts-maksym-samoiliuk-en","experts-anhelina-zavadetska","news_type-press-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36820"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36847,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36820\/revisions\/36847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36820"},{"taxonomy":"experts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/experts?post=36820"},{"taxonomy":"news_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ces.org.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_type?post=36820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}