Activists from the Anti-Corruption Action Center on July 11 launched a new English-language digital map to help Ukraine’s international partners and donors monitor the implementation of anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has fulfilled 60 percent of its obligations to international donors, including the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, by the estimate of Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center.
However, since the European Union granted visa-free travel to Ukrainians starting on June 11, watchdogs and reformist lawmakers say the fight against corruption has stalled out.
Even worse, they say they have seen determined efforts by the authorities to sabotage, undermine and otherwise reverse previous anti-corruption achievements.
“That 60 percent – the public procurement system, the electronic declarations system launch, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine creation and many more – happened and succeeded only because of constant pressure from international donors and civil society,” Kaleniuk said during the presentation of the digital map.
She was joined at a press conference by members of parliament Hanna Hopko and Sergii Leshchenko the day before a European Union-Ukraine Summit in Kyiv.
Kaleniuk said the activists have created a digital map of Ukraine’s anti-corruption conditionalities in order to protect Ukrainian achievements in anti-corruption reform, and to help international donors to continue pushing Ukraine’s authorities to conduct further reforms.
The website offers a detailed analysis of what concrete steps have, and have not been taken in corruption investigations and prosecutions, opening up public access to information, preventing corruption, recovering stolen assets and making public procurement more transparent – the basic demands of the IMF and EU for further loans.
The tool gives monthly updates on high-profile corruption cases progress, anti-corruption legislation and much more, so donors can see exactly how the Ukrainian government is managing the loans provided by the IMF and EU to fight against corruption.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center said that the IMF has already transferred $13.2 billion out of $17.5 billion in planned financial help for Ukraine: $4.5 billion in 2014, $6.7 billion in 2015, and $1 billion in 2016.
But the lender has held back a promised $ 1 billion loan in 2017, as the Ukrainian government has so far failed to meet several demands: create an agricultural land market, cut the pension deficit, overhaul the health care system and set up a specialized anti-corruption court.
Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker with the 135-member Bloc of Petro Poroshenko and a member of parliament’s anti-corruption committee, told journalists on July 11 that he didn’t believe that the regular, corrupt Ukrainian courts would convict any of those accused of high-profile corruption in cases investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
Lawmakers missed a June 14 IMF deadline to vote for a bill to establish the anti-corruption court, even though the draft law was proposed in February.
“There is no political will to set up the anti-corruption court among Ukrainian officials, especially now, when they’ve already started preparing for the election campaign” in 2019, Leshchenko said. “Nobody wants to be convicted of corruption or have his cronies accused of bribery while fighting for power.”
The lawmaker added that the work of the NABU demonstrated that only newly created institutions could effectively fight Ukraine’s main bane – corrupt officials fleecing the nation of billions of dollars and stifling foreign investment.
