The Verkhovna Rada has voted to re-implement the Criminal Code article, punishing illicit enrichment, with 259 people’s deputies voting for the bill.
Adoption of the bill was demanded by the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine’s major lender.
Anastasia Krasnosilska, the chair of the anti-corruption committee, presented the bill for its second reading.
In June, President Volodymyr Zelensky filed a draft law proposing to punish civil servants for dubious assets after the Constitutional Court declared article 368-2, which punishes officials for illegal enrichment, as unconstitutional on Feb. 26.
“Everyone understands that it is not normal when there is a judge or prosecutor, who supposedly receives a modest salary all his life, lives in a five story house with a tennis court and two pools. And this said house is registered to his mother, a retiree who has paid 10 thousand (hryvnia or roughy $400) in taxes throughout her life. It is clear that this situation is abnormal and is an indicator of illegal corruption of such judge or prosecutor,” Krasnosilska said.
In its second reading, the bill proposes to establish accountability for unjust enrichment if assets acquired by officials exceed Hr 6.5 million ($262,556) more than their legal income.
Krasnosilska added that the bill provides a mechanism of civil confiscation of property “”if the suspicious income of an official is worth more than his legal income, starting from Hr 1 million.”
The tools of civil confiscation and criminal liability will only be available to National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecution (SAP) and High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine (VAKS),” the committee chairman added.
The two tools will work together to bring the biggest thefts to accountability. The civil confiscation will only set in once evidence gathered by the prosecutor’s office is presented to the court and only if the court agrees with the submitted evidence.
