The International Monetary Fund, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine have sent Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada a letter asking that it delay consideration of all 13 draft laws about criminal liability for illegal enrichment. The letter said all the measures proposed are incomplete.
“The U.S. ambassador, the IMF mission, the EU ambassador wrote a letter … asking to postpone consideration of all bills, because they are imperfect, including the one proposed by the president,” the head of parliament’s committee on legislative support for law enforcement said at a meeting of Rada faction leaders and parliamentary groups on March 18.
According to the constitutional representation of 59 deputies of Ukraine, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared unconstitutional Article 368-2 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code of Ukraine on illegal enrichment, as its provisions do not comply with the principles of the rule of law and the presumption of innocence.
Changes in Article 368-2 of the Criminal Code on illegal enrichment appeared in 2015. The Ukrainian parliament adopted the corresponding bill in general in February of that year. It became one of the bills in the package of anti-corruption initiatives and was a condition for the liberalization of the visa regime with the EU, as well as the continuation of cooperation of Ukraine with the International Monetary Fund.
On February 28, 2019, parliament registered the president’s draft law on amending the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code on liability for illegal enrichment (No. 1010). Deputies submitted a dozen alternative initiatives to the presidential bill.
On March 7, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko urged parliament to urgently adopt a new wording of the Criminal Code article on illegal enrichment.
