In 97% of cases, corrupt officials receive only a fine
More than 2,000 court decisions against corrupt officials have already been issued this year, according to the Unified State Register of Persons Who Committed Corruption or Corruption-Related Offenses. This is 37% more than last year, but still less than before the start of the great war. In 97% of cases, corrupt officials get off with a fine. And the most common offense is violation of financial control: officials either fail to file declarations or file them with errors.
In the first five months of 2025, 2032 decisions were made by courts in corruption cases. The number of decisions increased by 37% over the year. However, this is still less than in the same period in 2021.
The number of decisions has been gradually increasing after a large decline following the start of the full-scale campaign in 2022-2023. Back then, filing declarations was optional and deferred, and the annual number of decisions decreased by almost three times. Almost 5,000 decisions were issued by the courts after the mandatory filing of declarations was reintroduced in 2024. By the way, declarations for previous years had to be filed then as well, if they had not been done before.
Courts in Vinnytsia region are the most active in punishing corruption offenses – they have already issued 182 decisions, which is 9% of the total. This is followed by Odesa (168), the leader of previous years – Lviv (147), as well as Dnipro (116) and Kyiv (115) regions.
More than 73% of all decisions this year relate to violations of financial control requirements – 1487. In other words, officials do not submit or submit their declarations with violations. Over the year, the number of such decisions has increased 5 times – probably, declarations accumulated in previous periods were checked. Instead, the number of decisions on bribery almost halved to 347. And the courts punish violations related to conflicts of interest almost 80% less often. This year, it is only 70 decisions.
In the overwhelming majority of cases – 97% – corrupt officials are fined. Only 44 people received actual prison terms. The amount of fines depends on the violation and varies considerably: from 850 UAH to 680 thousand UAH. The same applies to prison terms for corruption: from 1 to 10 years.
So far this year, the largest fine has been imposed on a graduate student of a music academy in Kyiv who offered foreign students assistance with admission, training, and thesis defense for a fee. He was fined UAH 680,000 for this.
At the same time, a military serviceman in Sumy region received the longest prison term for corruption. The sergeant was responsible for logistics and, having received a night vision device and a thermal imager for his report, decided to misappropriate it and then sell it. For this, the court sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
It is worth noting that a person who enters the Corrupt Practices Register is entered there for life. However, there are several grounds for removing data from the registry:
In other cases, a person’s data will remain in the Register forever, even if it is a minor violation, such as that of a civil servant who once filed a late declaration.
However, recently, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case of Sytnyk v. Ukraine, application No. 16497/20 of April 24, 2025, made a resonant decision in favor of the applicant and found Ukraine guilty of violating human rights. Thus, the court ruled that the applicant’s lifelong inclusion in the Corrupt Practices Register and the “labeling of a corrupt official” in this case constituted an interference with his right to respect for private life: it damaged his professional and public reputation, undermined confidence in his professional efforts and achievements, and called into question his moral values.
Currently, the President is signing a draft law that would limit the stay of officials with administrative offenses related to corruption in the Register of Corrupt Officials for 1 year.
https://opendatabot.ua/analytics/corrupted-officials-2025
