Zelenskyy’s corruption crackdown plan raises cover-up fears

Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky have been at the center of the world’s attention for more than 14 months — since Russia launched an invasion. The pressure hasn’t let up on Zelensky or his country as Western partners now wait for Kyiv to use newly donated modern weaponry, including battle tanks, in a highly anticipated spring counteroffensive. 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s move to equate wartime corruption with treason is triggering a backlash from officials and watchdogs, who warn the plan could hobble Ukraine’s main anti-graft forces.

Two senior officials following the proposal, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, say concerns are growing within Ukraine’s anti-graft agencies that Zelenskyy’s plan will take top corruption cases away from their oversight and pass them to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which falls under the president’s command.

The SBU could, potentially, have the power to bury corruption cases involving top officials. The move, the officials say, could put Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure under threat, and anti-corruption watchdogs are sounding the alarm.

By equating corruption to treason, Zelenskyy’s office is manipulating the public’s desire for justice, said Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (Antac), a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization that monitors graft. In reality, Shabunin added, Zelenskyy’s office is pursuing other goals: to protect high-level officials from corruption charges and obtain tools to destroy opponents.

“February and March 2022 — it was a fight for the existence of Ukraine. If I see the corruption cases dated that time, I demand solid evidence. If there is one [evidence], the guilty must be punished by court, not public opinion,” Zelenskyy said in a televised interview. “As for my idea of equating corruption to state treason during wartime, I think it will be a very serious instrument to make them not even think about it [corruption].” 

Zelenskyy acted to begin the process of changing the law after another case of wartime corruption was uncovered last week, in which two high-ranking Ukrainian officials were named as suspects in an embezzlement scheme involving the procurement of humanitarian aid. 

Corruption scandals in Zelenskyy’s administration have drawn increased attention at the same time as the country is pushing to start membership talks with the European Union. 

The deadline for Ukraine’s seven-step progress is approaching in October and the country, so far, has fulfilled only two steps, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna said during a conference in Kyiv earlier this month. Still, Stefanishyna said, partners acknowledged tremendous progress Ukraine made during the war and she still hopes accession talks will start in December. 

Though Zelenskyy personally has not been implicated in scandal, some 77 percent of Ukrainians think he is responsible for ongoing corruption in the government and local military administrations, according to a poll by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation think tank published at the beginning of August.