President Volodymyr Zelensky signed bill No. 12414, which introduces changes to and limits the work of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutorʼs Office (SAPO).
UPD: as of 23:15, the presidentʼs signature, which was mentioned in the billʼs card, had disappeared. And as of 23:24, the inscription "returned with the signature of the President of Ukraine" had returned.
In fact, the law limits the exclusive right of NABU and SAPO to investigate cases of top corrupt officials.
The law amends the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Among other things, the Prosecutor General will be granted 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.
Amendments are also envisaged that will limit the activities of the 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 bill.
What preceded
On the morning of July 22, the parliamentary committee considered amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code. Amendments were made to bill No. 12414, which was supposed to simplify the lives of relatives of Ukrainians who went missing and were killed in frontline areas. The document had nothing to do with anti-corruption agencies. The committee adopted the amendments. The first deputy chairman of the committee Andriy Osadchuk and the head of the relevant subcommittee and author of the bill Oleksandr Bakumov were not notified of the meeting.
At noon, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the bill with all amendments by 263 votes.
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