Ukraine clamps down on corruption as Western supporters cast watchful eye

KYIV, Ukraine - The photos showed hundred-dollar bills lying in piles on furniture and jutting out of a safe — the results of what officials from Ukraine’s main anti-corruption body said last month was a $2.7 million bribery scheme involving the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court, Vsevolod Knyazyev.

Last month, anti-corruption investigators said they caught Knyazyev “red-handed” receiving a payment of about $450,000 — a “second tranche of illegal benefits” in a corruption scheme potentially involving other members of Ukraine’s Supreme Court and judiciary. The cash in the photos was found at his home and office, officials said. Knyazyev was arrested and dismissed from his position, and a criminal investigation is ongoing.

“This is huge,” said Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, an anti-graft watchdog in Kyiv. “This is not an ordinary judge in a local court taking a bribe — it’s the highest judge in the system.”

As Ukraine mounts its counteroffensive against invading Russian forces, law enforcement officials in Kyiv are waging a war on corruption with similarly high stakes for the country’s future. Ukraine is surviving not only on donated weapons but also on foreign economic aid, and Western supporters want to be sure their money is not lost to the graft and malfeasance that has long stunted Ukraine’s democratic aspirations.

Ukraine’s dream of joining the European Union will hinge in part on the anti-corruption fight, and the political future of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who won office four years ago promising to eliminate corruption — could also hang in the balance. Amid a war that has required heavy physical and emotional sacrifices, polls show Ukrainians’ tolerance of endemic corruption has evaporated.

Earlier this month, Zelenskyy, in answering a journalist’s question, called the arrest of the head of the Supreme Court a cause for “hope” and suggested it was a threshold moment.

“When has this happened?” he said.

Foreign donors to Ukraine will gather at a major international conference in London this week to discuss postwar reconstruction, which by some estimates could cost $1 trillion. Support could founder, however, if the country is seen as a black hole for Western aid, adding further urgency to the anti-corruption campaign.

Zelenskyy has called a meeting of his National Security and Defense Council for later this week to discuss judicial reform.

The investigation that ensnared Knyazyev is the biggest since the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) were established eight years ago. The two independent government bodies were created specifically to root out the graft and backroom dealings that have chronically plagued Ukraine.

It also will reveal the extent of corruption within the Supreme Court, which faces the question of what court decisions may have been tainted by Knyazyev and other potentially corrupt judges. The court is made up of 168 members, and judicial panels can include up to 18 judges.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s wide-ranging reform process could come under question. The corruption could extend to the High Council of Justice, activists say, an independent body responsible for determining judicial candidates’ eligibility based on their ethics and integrity.

“Obviously, (we’re asking) were there other cases (of bribery)?” said a European diplomat in Kyiv, speaking on background due to the sensitivity of the issue. “And of course I’d like to see (whether) the current justice reform was not compromised by Knyazyev?”

“It would be absolutely excellent if the Supreme Court were to be able to clean itself, in their house,” the diplomat said.

Knyazyev’s fellow judges issued a statement saying the case was “a black day” in the Supreme Court’s history.

NABU officials said the case was part of a wider bribery scheme to bring “corrupt pressure on the courts.” Investigators released wiretap recordings and text messages, purportedly of Knyazyev discussing how to pass the bribes on to him and other judges, and to divide one of the payments into 13 smaller tranches. Investigators searched the premises of three other judges, news reports said.

Law enforcement officers said they found close to $1 million in cash when they raided Knyazyev’s home and office in May, and another $500,000 in a second unidentified location a few days later.

Knyazyev denies the charges. At a hearing, he said the cash belonged to “friends,” who “before leaving for abroad, even before the start of the war, asked me to keep this money.”

The payments, the authorities said, were in exchange for the Supreme Court deciding in favor of a Ukrainian “businessman” — later identified as Kostiantyn Zhevaho, a Ukrainian billionaire living in France — in a case over the ownership of one of his holdings. Zhevaho, who is fighting extradition to Ukraine on separate accusations of embezzlement, has not been charged in the bribery case and denies having done anything illegal.

Members of Zelenskyy’s team say the anti-corruption drive is now shifting into high gear. In February, Ukrainian officials announced searches, investigations, firings and resignations — including Zelenskyy’s deputy chief of staff and a deputy defense minister — part of what they said was an anti-corruption housecleaning. The allegations included purchasing food for the country’s armed forces at inflated prices.

Officials say that these investigations are all ongoing. According to Ukrainian law, after an investigation is opened, authorities have up to one year to deliver an indictment or dismiss the case.

Shevchuk of the Anti-Corruption Action Center said Zelenskyy has “no role” in Knyazyev’s case and should let NABU and SAPO “do their job.”

But on other fronts in the anti-corruption fight, Zelenskyy and his party, which enjoys a majority in the country’s legislature, the Verkhovna Rada, are falling short. A bill that would reinstate the public declaration of officials’ assets has stalled in parliament.

In 2021, Zelenskyy said he was cracking down on the country’s billionaire and multimillionaire oligarchs, asking them in an address if they wanted to continue running monopolies and interfering in politics or to “work legally and transparently.”

An “anti-oligarch bill” forced some of the billionaires to sell off their media holdings, while the war with Russia depleted their wealth and influence — especially among those whose fortunes were based in the country’s east. But for others, their business empires remained largely intact.

Last month, officials at the Security Service of Ukraine said they had opened a criminal investigation against another billionaire, Dmytro Firtash, who was accused of embezzling close to $500 million from the state budget over an eight-year period through a gas-purchasing scheme. Firtash lives in Vienna and is battling extradition to the United States on bribery charges. He denies the Ukrainian accusations.

Anti-corruption activists credit the heads of NABU and SAPO — Semen Kryvonos and Oleksandr Klymenko, respectively — as playing a major role in the rejuvenated anti-corruption campaign.

But observers also question cases that NABU and SAPO are aggressively pursuing against a number of former officials. The cases hinge on procedural questions, which officials say resulted in losses to the state budget, but so far, no accusations of bribery or personal enrichment have been made.

Former infrastructure minister Andriy Pivovarsky is being investigated for “excessive use of authority” that allegedly resulted in some $40 million in losses to the country’s port authority.

However, Pivovarsky maintains that his actions were in fact deregulatory measures, which did not result in financial losses but instead redirected the funds for the ports’ upkeep, all of which was approved by the government and numerous ministries.

If his case goes to court and he is convicted, he could face two to six years in prison.

“People don’t question the legality of the acceptance of the document [I signed] and don’t question the process,” Pivovarsky said. “They are saying that I fooled everyone: the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy, the state regulation agency, the Ministry of Justice. We’re talking hundreds of people that were involved.”

“It sounds absurd, but that’s what I am accused of,” he said.

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The Washington Post’s Isobel Koshiw contributed to this report.