In a decade since the formation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the agency has produced little tangible results in any of its high-profile cases.
Its role in tackling corruption in Ukraine has continued to come under fire.
The media cleverly — and rightfully, it would appear — has compared the NABU’s activity to recreational fishing: the briber gets caught red-handed, the pictures with the culprit and the cash diligently spread out all over the room are taken, and off they go back into the wild. This whole spectacle, is funded by the taxpayers, including those from the U.S. and EU.
Just in the last two years, the agency ‘domesticated’ close to 20 million dollars from foreign donors. The U.S. alone provided technical assistance to the NABU in the framework of two programs, namely to strengthen the ability of countering high-ranking corruption and to support the criminal justice reforms. In a single year of 2024, the agency received 120m hryvnias of international funds, while the money keeps coming in 2025. Despite the fact this measly sum is just about 2.5% of the Bureau’s 2025 budget (2.1 billion hryvnias), it’s not that much about the money, but how ineffectively it is spent by the state agency.
The scandals, however, that involve the National Anti-Corruption Bureau spectacularly failing to fight corruption are plenty. A couple have continued to come out in Ukrainian media reports recently.
The NABU detectives deliberately leaking detailed intel of the ongoing investigation in regard to the “Big Construction” schemes, letting the suspects evade any rightful retribution. Also, the very recent dismissal of the NABU detective Andrii Denysiuk who investigated the procurement of drones; the reason for detective’s departure from the agency — the inability
to conduct an investigation.
Such an array of bad trends surrounding the NABU already led to the anti-corruption activists giving up on the state agency. Yuriy Nikolov, reputable investigative journalist, wrote the following: “The Bureau is done. My old jokes that it would be better to kick everybody out and sell the premises are jokes only in part.” There was at some point a pending petition on the website of the President of Ukraine to terminate the NABU, but it failed to reach the required number of votes in time.
The Bureau evaluates its own efficiency based on the number of opened criminal cases. The agency does not shy away from falsely showboating their part in the rulings of the High Anti-Corruption Court. As expected, they only mention the successful cases, but not the ones that fell apart after a couple of hearings. This basically enforces the Bureau’s tactics of opening as many cases as possible. As a result, the country is not many steps.
closer to ridding the political establishment of bribery, it’s just the opposite: Ukraine is now considered “the most corrupt state of the world”, somehow justifying the allocation of even more funds to the Bureau. In the face of President Trump’s dangerous language and removal of aid, Ukrainian anti-corruption moves are crucial in securing the Western support and aid that it needs. Window-dressing operations only feed Mr Trump’s damaging and politically-motivated overtures to Putin.
As Nikolov put it: “NABU strongly resembles any of the similar law enforcement agencies, which rather than actually fight the corruption, display ridiculous stats covering up the traditional “fees” from the perpetrators. That’s when your case falls apart along the way or the “pay and walk away” option is on the table. You can’t be too grateful for such a Get Out of Jail Free card. Another scenario, which is even worse if you think about it, is that the NABU has lost its purpose completely, meaning they are unable to operate efficiently and have zero drive to bring the criminals to justice; they’ve become an impotent countryside precinct of pencil pushers with inflated sense of self-worth.”
Just an example, one out of many, is the recent NABU investigation involving Volodymyr Orlov, the former deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, charged with extorting a bribe of $200,000 for illegal land allotment.
This episode adds dirt to the NABU’s already imperfect reputation. Orlov was visited by his old-time pal Oleksii; the two first met in 2011. Oleksii was eager to make some money, so he tried talking Orlov into helping to sell a quarry in Kyivska Oblast, and get a hold of Kostyantyn Zhevago’s assets later. In the end, he basically begged Orlov to sign a land allotment deal to forward 19 hectares of land, still pending in the Regional Military Administration domain, for long-term use to one of the enterprises in Dnipropetrovska Oblast. It was later discovered that a resort facility had been already constructed on the very same land lot that Oleksii was so adamant to obtain. With a signed land deal in their pocket, those in charge of the construction would have found a way to legalize their facility’s right to existence. A criminal case was opened regarding this incident, but closed under some peculiar circumstances on January 31, 2024.
Signing such a binding document, according to job description, is bestowed upon the head of the Dnipropetrovska Oblast Military Administration Serhii Lysak, while Orlov’s responsibilities lay in a different domain. However, each time the head of the Administration was away on business, those pleading for the coveted 19 hectares came out of the woodwork, time and again. Such visits occurred 29 times between May and August alone.
According to the case files, Orlov often said no quite a few times during a single meeting. After all, as a result of irreconcilable differences and opposition to Lysak’s actions as the head of the Administration, Orlov resigned in late-July 2024. On October 24, 2024, the NABU
accused Orlov of extorting $200,000 for allotment of a 19 hectares land lot. The next day, October 25, the High Anti-Corruption Court decided on a restraining measure in the form of a 15m hryvnias bail, later increasing it to 22.7 million.
Stranger things ensued in the case that was started in May 2024. It should be noted that neither land allotment, nor allocation of money ever happened. For the next six months the NABU investigators spent appending to the case files a wiretap recording from July 2024, when Orlov three times turns down Oleksii’s offer. Moreover, all the case materials are based solely on the testimony of Oleksii, who is a NABU agent and a Russian-tainted fraud in the eyes of some. And, just to add insult to injury, Orlov’s responses where he clearly refuses to cooperate with the swindler went down in transcripts as “unintelligible”. Nevermind such a minor fact that the Bureau and their agent effectively committed a crime of provoking bribery (Art. 370 of the Criminal Code of Urkaine).
Some of this will come to an end, eventually. Ukraine launched an extensive audit of the NABU in autumn 2024. In early 2025, the United States cut the funding of their programmes and intends to shake the Bureau up as well. For these wasted millions should perhaps be allocated to the Armed Forces instead. Perhaps without that hollow imitation of fighting the corruption by the hands of the country’s main anti-corruption agency, Ukraine stands a better chance at defeating the Russians on the battlefield. Ukraine can and will take care of its high-ranking corruptors when the time’s right. The Ukrainian justice system has plenty of law enforcement agencies to prosecute the perpetrators. In a perfect world, Ukraine’s Parliament should have put corruption and state treason inside the same brackets, meaning the same severity of repercussions; President Zelenskyy suggested we do so back in August 2023.
The NABU’s efficiency needs to be assessed not by the number of pending cases, a fair share of which are fabricated, thus crumbling under first signs of pressure in courtrooms. You can tell the measures undertaken to fight the corruption are effective when there’s little to none corruption to begin with. And, without a doubt, some real punishment for those corruptors must follow. That will be the best way for the Ukrainain government to show its transparency in the face of great international threats from America, and to provide security and support from its European allies.
Written by Patrick Maxwell