Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada has adopted draft law No. 13533, submitted by President Volodymyr Zelensky, which reinstates the independence of key anti-corruption institutions.
Overall, 331 lawmakers voted in favor of the bill.
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The law restores autonomy to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) in conducting investigations and covert investigative actions.
During the pre-vote discussion, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, Dmytro Kostiuk, announced his resignation from the party. He claimed that lawmakers were being pressured to vote against the independence of anti-corruption bodies, with threats of harassment.
This vote reverses these events: On Tuesday, July 22, the Verkhovna Rada voted to strip NABU and SAP of their independence – a move that drew sharp criticism from the EU and triggered mass protests demanding its reversal.
Many feared that weakening these institutions would block investigations into high-level corruption.
Thursday’s bill restores the independence of anti-corruption institutions, whereas the previous law, on the contrary, subordinated them to the Prosecutor General.
Under the previous legislation, the Prosecutor General had the authority to take over any criminal proceedings from NABU or SAPO at any time and transfer them to any other law enforcement agency.
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This sparked serious concern, as the Prosecutor General is part of the very state apparatus that Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms were designed to keep at arm’s length. The Office of the Prosecutor General also has a long history of friction with NABU.
For instance, in October 2020, NABU opened a case against the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office, Oleh Tatarov. In December, NABU and SAPO announced they had formally served him with a notice of suspicion.
However, almost immediately, the Office of the Prosecutor General, led at the time by Iryna Venediktova, removed the case from NABU and handed it over to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), then headed by Ivan Bakanov. The case stalled during the full-scale invasion in 2022.
It was precisely this kind of precedent – and fears that the law limiting the powers of NABU and SAPO would result in further failures to investigate top-level corruption – that triggered mass protests nationwide.
This news story will be updated as more information becomes available.
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