A scandalous decision by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine that effectively cancels asset declarations for public officials may have an unexpected consequence: It apparently threatens the results of the country’s Oct. 25 local elections.
For newly-elected government officials to be appointed, their asset declarations must be audited by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NAPC), something required by law. But the court’s ruling took away the NAPC’s power to access declarations and audit them.
“The Constitutional Court actually blocked the implementation of local election results,” says the statement published by the NAPC.
The statement comes less than two days after the Constitutional Court ruled on Oct. 27 that the open declaration registry is unconstitutional, a decision perceived by many as a major blow to Ukraine’s efforts in fighting corruption.
The court concluded that public access and NAPC’s power to monitor asset declarations violated the Constitution. It has also ruled to cancel criminal liability for officials who falsify information when disclosing their assets.
According to Ukraine’s law “On the Prevention of Corruption,” every government official has to file a declaration of their assets to the NAPC within 15 days of them taking office. The NAPC then analyzes the reports and makes them available to the public in an electronic registry.
“This is unprecedented,” Natalia Lynnyk, deputy general director of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, told Kyiv Post. “There must be a new legal claim with new arguments, so the decision of the court is somehow reformatted. Otherwise, this is revenge and a return to the times of Yanukovych.”
The electronic declaration registry was established in 2016. It was one of the key conditions set by the European Union to grant a visa-free regime between the European Union and Ukraine.
The EU now may have grounds to suspend its visa-free regime with Ukraine because the Constitutional Court has infringed on anti-corruption legislation, Mykola Tochytsky, Ukraine’s ambassador to the EU, wrote in a letter to Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olga Stefanyshyna that was leaked to Ukrainian media on Oct. 29.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has called an urgent closed-door meeting of the National Security and Defense Council to discuss a response to court rulings that threaten the country’s anti-corruption infrastructure and, by extent, Ukraine’s national security, Zelensky’s office said.
“The devastating damage inflicted on the country’s achievements in the effective fight against corruption in Ukraine cannot be ignored,” said Zelensky.
