National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine
Based on Wikipedia: National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine
The Investigators Who Cannot Indict
In the spring of 2015, seventy detectives walked into a new office building in Kyiv with an unusual mandate: investigate the most powerful people in Ukraine, gather evidence of their crimes, build airtight cases—and then hand everything over to someone else to actually prosecute.
This is the curious design of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, known by its Ukrainian acronym NABU. It can investigate. It can surveil. It can search offices and freeze assets. But it cannot indict anyone. Every case it builds must pass through the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office before a single charge can be filed.
Why separate investigation from prosecution? The answer lies in the corrupting nature of power itself. When one institution controls both the gathering of evidence and the decision to charge, the temptation to shield friends and target enemies becomes overwhelming. By splitting these functions, Ukraine created a system of checks—a built-in tension between two bodies that must agree before anyone faces justice.
Born from International Pressure
NABU did not emerge from some internal Ukrainian epiphany about good governance. It was, quite literally, a condition of survival.
In 2014, Ukraine was reeling. Russia had just annexed Crimea. Armed conflict was erupting in the eastern Donbas region. The economy was in freefall. The country desperately needed loans from the International Monetary Fund and wanted visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens.
Both came with strings attached. The IMF and the European Commission made clear: no anti-corruption bureau, no money, no visa relaxation. Ukraine had to prove it was serious about cleaning house.
The Verkhovna Rada—Ukraine's parliament—passed the enabling law in October 2014. By April 2015, President Petro Poroshenko had signed the founding decrees and appointed Artem Sytnyk as the bureau's first director. Sytnyk's first official act was approving the organizational structure. His second was hiring his deputy: a Georgian prosecutor named Gizo Uglava.
"Ukraine matters to Georgia," Uglava said when he took the job. "We believe that if we save Georgia, we save Ukraine, and the other way round. Moreover, that's my chance to do what I love—to investigate."
Training with the FBI
The first seventy NABU detectives didn't learn their trade from Ukrainian law enforcement. They trained with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States and received instruction from European Union specialists.
This matters more than it might seem. Traditional Ukrainian law enforcement had spent decades learning habits that NABU was designed to break. The new detectives needed to understand how to build cases that would survive in court, how to handle evidence chains that couldn't be challenged, how to resist the kinds of pressure that had compromised their predecessors.
The bureau also has an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI—meaning American investigators can provide leads on Ukrainian corruption that surfaces in international financial flows, and NABU can share information relevant to American cases.
By design, the agency was meant to grow to seven hundred employees. That growth happened gradually, a deliberate choice to prioritize quality over speed.
A Failed First Attempt
NABU wasn't Ukraine's first attempt at anti-corruption machinery. Before the bureau existed, there was a Commissioner for anti-corruption policy—a role created in 2009 under Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's government.
For years, this position accomplished little. By 2011, President Viktor Yanukovych—the same leader who would later flee to Russia amid mass protests—had made himself head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee. Having the country's most powerful politician oversee anti-corruption efforts is rather like asking a fox to guard the henhouse. The committee was tasked with "systematic analysis" and "developing measures," bureaucratic language that produces reports instead of prosecutions.
In March 2014, after Yanukovych's flight and the revolution that followed, activist journalist Tetiana Chornovol was appointed as the new anti-corruption commissioner. The position was supposed to grow into an organization of twelve hundred people across seven regional offices.
Chornovol lasted five months.
When she resigned in August 2014, she didn't mince words: "There is no political will in Ukraine to carry out a hard-edged, large-scale war against corruption."
Her resignation cleared the path for something different. NABU would be designed not as a policy office dependent on political will, but as an independent law enforcement agency with real investigative powers.
Going After the Big Fish
The true test of any anti-corruption body is whether it will pursue powerful targets or content itself with low-level bureaucrats accepting petty bribes. NABU's record suggests it chose the harder path.
In May 2023, the bureau executed what it called one of its most significant operations: arresting the Head of the Supreme Court. The charge? Accepting 2.7 million dollars in exchange for favorable rulings. According to investigators, the going rate for "judicial services" was 1.8 million dollars, with an additional nine hundred thousand meant for intermediaries who facilitated the deal.
This wasn't a mid-level judge in a provincial court. This was the person at the apex of Ukraine's judicial system.
The same year brought charges against a sitting cabinet minister. Mykola Solskyi, the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, was accused of misappropriating state land worth 291 million hryvnias—roughly 7 million dollars—while allegedly attempting to grab additional parcels worth 190 million hryvnias more.
A former Deputy Head of the President's Office faced charges for illicit enrichment of 15.7 million hryvnias. A Deputy Minister in the infrastructure ministry was caught receiving four hundred thousand dollars in what investigators called "undue benefits."
Members of parliament haven't been spared either. In 2022, NABU referred a case to court against an incumbent legislator who allegedly received 558 thousand hryvnias in improper payments.
The Oligarch and the Smuggling King
In November 2019, NABU served notice of suspicion to Oleg Bakhmatyuk, one of Ukraine's richest people. The case centered on the National Bank of Ukraine's takeover of 1.2 billion dollars in loans connected to his business empire.
That same month, investigators detained someone Ukrainian media had nicknamed "the king" and "the godfather" of Ukrainian smuggling: an Odesa businessman named Vadim Alperin. Along with him, they arrested a deputy chief of Kyiv City Customs. According to investigators, Alperin had offered a NABU detective eight hundred thousand dollars to make his problems disappear.
The bribe attempt failed.
Defense Sector Theft During Wartime
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine suddenly needed every resource it could muster for defense. This made corruption in the military supply chain not just a financial crime but a potential matter of life and death for soldiers at the front.
NABU didn't pause its work because of the war. If anything, the stakes increased.
In early 2019—before the full invasion but during the ongoing conflict in the east—an investigative journalism group called Bigus.Info published a report alleging that people in President Poroshenko's orbit controlled theft in the defense sector. NABU opened criminal proceedings. Searches were conducted at the homes of Oleh Hladkovsky, the former First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, his son Ihor, and others.
By April 2024, with the full-scale war in its third year, NABU and the prosecutor's office uncovered an organized group allegedly led by Artem Shylo, a former advisor to the Presidential Office who was still an active Security Service employee. The charge: embezzling 94.8 million hryvnias from Ukrzaliznytsia, the state railway company, through fraudulent transformer procurement. Journalists had previously reported that Shylo had accumulated assets worth nearly ten million dollars over a decade of public service.
Money for the Front Lines
There's an unusual wrinkle in how NABU operates during wartime. Assets it seizes don't simply sit in government accounts awaiting legal resolution. Since the invasion began, more than 1.22 billion hryvnias in pledges and six million dollars in seized assets were transferred directly to support Ukrainian soldiers. Another five million dollars came from a single case against a former Minister of Agrarian Policy.
This creates a direct line between corruption prosecutions and military capability—investigators catching thieves literally fund equipment for troops.
The American Influence Controversy
NABU's close ties to Western institutions have made it a target for accusations of foreign control.
In October 2019, a Ukrainian member of parliament named Andrii Derkach—who would later be sanctioned by the United States as a Russian agent—published documents allegedly showing American influence over NABU operations. The materials included correspondence that Derkach claimed contained lists of criminal cases detectives were working on and instructions about providing information regarding Burisma, the energy company once connected to Hunter Biden.
Former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin added fuel to this fire in April 2020, claiming that then-Vice President Joe Biden had been "the initiator" of NABU's establishment in 2015. Shokin alleged the purpose was to "steal the investigation powers from the State Bureau of Investigation" and install "emissaries who listen to the United States." Shokin had previously complained about pressure from Biden in investigations connected to Burisma.
The United States government has a different view of these claims. In September 2020, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Derkach specifically for "attempting to influence the U.S. electoral process" as part of a Russian influence operation.
The truth of NABU's relationship with American institutions is probably less dramatic than either narrative suggests. The bureau does receive training and support from the FBI. Its government funding is mandated under American and European aid programs. This is not hidden—it's the explicit design of an institution created to satisfy Western conditions for financial support.
Whether that makes NABU a tool of foreign interference or simply an institution built to international standards depends largely on one's prior assumptions about Ukraine's relationship with the West.
COVID Tests and Petty Schemes
Not every NABU case involves millions of dollars or cabinet ministers. Sometimes corruption is smaller, pettier, and almost absurd.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, officials at Ukrzaliznytsia—the state railway—attempted to purchase more than eleven thousand PCR tests at inflated prices. The illegal overpayment would have amounted to almost five million hryvnias. But internal auditors at the railway company caught the scheme before money changed hands and reported it to NABU.
The case illustrates something important about fighting corruption: sometimes the biggest impact comes not from dramatic arrests but from creating an environment where people know they might get caught.
The Nuclear Power Scandal
In November 2024, NABU announced one of its most significant investigations yet: a massive kickback scheme allegedly operating within Energoatom, Ukraine's nuclear power plant operator.
According to investigators, a government adviser and Energoatom's security director had taken control of company purchasing and forced contractors to pay corrupt fees of ten to fifteen percent to avoid having their contracts blocked. The alleged take: one hundred million dollars.
NABU had spent fifteen months gathering evidence, accumulating a thousand hours of telephone and audio recordings before moving to search Energoatom's offices. Seven individuals faced suspicion in what became known as the "Midas" case—named, presumably, for the mythical king whose touch turned everything to gold.
What the Bureau Actually Does
Understanding NABU requires understanding the specific powers it wields—and doesn't wield.
The bureau can conduct investigations and police operations. It can perform pre-trial inquiries into crimes within its jurisdiction. It can check on government officials to verify they're living within their means. It can freeze assets that might later be needed for compensation. It can analyze data, protect witnesses who report corruption, and publicize the results of its work.
What can NABU officers actually do in practice? They can demand documents—financial statements, property records, budget expenditures. They have direct access to government databases and communication networks. They can search for materials containing limited information. With proper authorization, they can obtain bank records and seal archives, cash registers, and premises.
They can create joint investigation teams with other agencies, enter government buildings freely with their credentials, and even commandeer private vehicles in emergencies—though they must later compensate the owners.
But all of this investigative power hits a wall when it comes time to charge someone. That power belongs to the prosecutors, not the bureau.
The Numbers
By NABU's own accounting, 2023 was its most successful year since the bureau's founding.
Working with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, the bureau uncovered wrongdoing by twenty-one senior state officials, thirty-nine heads of state-owned enterprises, sixteen judges, and eleven members of parliament. The economic impact of their work—meaning money recovered, losses prevented, or both—amounted to 4.7 billion hryvnias, roughly fifty percent higher than the previous year.
In 2022, the bureau had exposed 187 people and sent indictments against fifty-four to court.
Whether these numbers represent success depends on how you frame the question. Dozens of prosecutions per year is certainly more than zero. But in a country where corruption has been endemic for decades, it represents only the tip of a very large iceberg.
The Audit and the Protests
In October 2024, an external independent audit of NABU began—as required by the law that created it. The audit commission included experts appointed by Ukraine's international partners: a former deputy director of Estonia's Internal Security Service, a former Deputy Inspector General from the United States, and a former Director of Investigations from South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority.
But that same year brought a different kind of scrutiny. In July 2024, thousands of Ukrainians protested a new law that would subordinate NABU and the prosecutor's office to the Prosecutor General.
This matters because the entire premise of NABU's independence rests on its separation from traditional prosecutorial chains of command. If the Prosecutor General controls both NABU and the office that receives its cases, the structural check disappears. The fox gets the keys to the henhouse after all.
A Sister Agency
NABU isn't alone in Ukraine's anti-corruption architecture. A separate body called the National Agency on Corruption Prevention takes a different approach: instead of investigating crimes after they happen, it monitors government officials' lifestyles to spot corruption before it metastasizes.
If a mid-level bureaucrat suddenly starts driving a luxury car and vacationing in the Maldives, the Prevention Agency wants to know why. This kind of lifestyle monitoring can catch corruption that never generates the paper trails NABU investigators need for criminal cases.
The two agencies represent complementary strategies: prevention through surveillance and deterrence through prosecution.
The Harder Question
Nearly a decade after its founding, NABU has compiled a record that defies simple characterization.
The bureau has pursued genuinely powerful targets: a Supreme Court chief, sitting ministers, billionaire oligarchs, members of parliament. It has operated through a revolution, a limited war, and a full-scale invasion. It has maintained sufficient independence that protesters took to the streets when that independence was threatened.
But corruption in Ukraine remains endemic. Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, while showing improvement, still ranks Ukraine in the bottom half of countries worldwide. The question isn't whether NABU has done something—it clearly has—but whether the something is enough.
Tetiana Chornovol's words from 2014 still echo: "There is no political will in Ukraine to carry out a hard-edged, large-scale war against corruption."
Perhaps the better question is whether any single institution can supply political will that doesn't otherwise exist—or whether institutions like NABU can only work at the margins, catching individual wrongdoers while the underlying system that produces them remains intact.
The seventy detectives who started work in October 2015 have now grown to hundreds. The cases keep coming. The powerful keep falling. And the corruption, reduced but not eliminated, continues to find new forms.
That may be the most honest assessment available: not victory, not defeat, but an ongoing struggle with no clear end.