“There may be an attack that we will not be able to withstand.” The NABU Director reacts to new law and risks for anti-corruption agencies

The Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) Semen Kryvonos insists that draft law No. 13533, which restores the procedural independence of NABU and the Special Anticorruption Prosecutorʼs Office (SAPO), be adopted in two readings at once to avoid the risk of amendments, blocking, or delays. At the same time, he believes that despite the new law, attacks on anti-corruption bodies may continue.

He spoke about this in an interview with Suspilne.

"The NABU detectives and the SAPO prosecutors took a direct part in working on this bill. It fully restores the procedural independence of NABU and SAPO. If now this independence has actually been destroyed, then the bill, if voted on Thursday, will return everything to the way it was. It provides us with full guarantees of independence [and the opportunity] to move forward in criminal proceedings," said Kryvonos.

And he explained that by the time the new law comes into force, there is a possibility that the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office will request the cases of both bodies for review. Also, SAPO and NABU cannot move in high-profile proceedings, because the head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutorʼs Office has actually lost procedural rights.

According to the NABU director, he learned that Volodymyr Zelensky had submitted this bill from a message on Telegram.

In response to the question of why a law restricting the work of NABU and SAPO appeared at all, Semen Kryvonos stated that NABU and SAPO, despite the discrediting campaign, work effectively and expose corruption among high-ranking officials, in particular the Deputy Prime Minister and deputies, and reveal losses in the millions. And this affected major interests, which is why various political forces united against the anti-corruption bodies.

The NABU Director noted that representatives of international institutions, the United States, the European Union, and the World Bank conducted an internal audit of the Bureau, identified shortcomings, and provided appropriate recommendations. Therefore, NABU will draw up a plan and implement these recommendations.

"Because in the future attack it will be possible to not resist — we clearly realize and understand this. Therefore [there are] two components in our work: to work and communicate with society. To communicate with those people who currently support us," Kryvonos emphasized.

What is happening with NABU and SAPO?

On July 22, Volodymyr Zelensky signed Law No. 12414, which amends the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Among other things, this law grants the Prosecutor General the following powers:

• to take cases from NABU and entrust the investigation to other bodies;
• be the de facto head of SAPO and delegate the powers of the SAPO prosecutor to other prosecutors;
• provide the NABU detectives with mandatory written instructions;
• independently close cases on suspicion of top officials.

The law also contains amendments that limited the activities of SAPO, namely:

• the SAPO prosecutors will not be able to determine NABUʼs jurisdiction in certain cases;
• the head of SAPO will not be able to resolve disputes about the subjectivity of investigation in cases that NABU can investigate;
• The head of SAPO will not have the authority to amend appeals and cassation complaints filed by the SAPO prosecutors.

NABU and SAPO emphasized that if the document is adopted, the head of SAPO will become a nominal figure, and NABU will lose its independence and turn into a unit of the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office. In Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, and Dnipro, people took to the streets to protest against the draft law on July 22, and they continued the next day, July 23.

Already on July 24, at the initiative of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Verkhovna Rada registered draft law No. 13533 on "strengthening the powers" of NABU and SAPO. Anti-corruption authorities supported this initiative.

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