On the 10th anniversary of the NABU's establishment, an expert named the top 10 anti-accomplishments of the Bureau
In the 10 years since its creation, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau has completely disappointed Ukrainians: it has spent many times more money on its activities than it has recovered from corrupt officials. At the same time, its leadership and detectives have become so mired in scandals that even anti-corruption activists consider it appropriate to disband the NABU. "The Bureau has been fighting corruption so hard that it hasn't noticed how it has become a part of it," political expert and lawyer Mykhailo Schneider said in his assessment of the NABU's activities.
"The National Anti-Corruption Bureau is not trusted by 62.3% of Ukrainians. This is what 10 years of anti-corruption reform look like: The NABU has gone from being the hope of Ukrainians for cleansing corruption to a district police station with flies and drug trafficking. The legal community has repeatedly spoken out about this: The Bureau needs to be disbanded, because there will be no results with this Bureau. The NABU has been fighting corruption so hard that it hasn't noticed how it has become a part of it," Schneider wrote.
He cited 10 anti-accomplishments of the Bureau during its existence. First of all, the state spends much more money on NABU than it receives as a result of investigations. The costs are 2.2 times higher than the benefits received: in 2024, the state budget spent UAH 1.874 billion on NABU, while the Bureau's activities led to the recovery of as much as UAH 823 million from corrupt officials, the expert noted.
He also reminded that the first head of the Bureau, Artem Sytnyk, is an official corrupt official who led the United States to accuse Ukraine of interfering in their elections. In addition, the current head of the NABU, Semen Kryvonos, has an official criminal record, and his wife was caught serving a criminal mastermind, Schneider said.
In general, he emphasized, contrary to the requirements of the law, not a single audit of the NABU has been conducted in 10 years, and the Bureau itself has never reported to Ukrainians in the Verkhovna Rada.
Other anti-accomplishments noted by the expert include the flight to Romania of a NABU detective with ties to Russia and major credit problems; exposing a NABU representative for manufacturing and selling amphetamines and other drugs; merging investigations into abuses in the procurement of drones for the Armed Forces; forcing witnesses to have intimate relationships by detectives; helping relatives of criminals escape responsibility; and putting NABU on the board of shame by anti-corruption organizations.
According to the expert, the tenth anniversary of the NABU is passing quietly and unnoticed, unlike when the Bureau was launched.
"There are no reports in the media. There are no positive assessments. It's sad, like a wake. The structure created in 2015 to the applause of civic activists, on which so many hopes were placed, is coming to naught without any noise. Those who went to slay the dragon have become a dragon themselves. There are more and more scandals, and the successes are invisible even under a microscope," Schneider summarized.