Ukraine's Constitutional Court Annuls Legislation On Illegal Enrichment
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- Ukraine's Constitutional Court has annulled legislation aimed at fighting against illegal enrichment among officials, in a move that was denounced by a Ukrainian law enforcement agency fighting against corruption as a "step back."
The court ruled on February 27 that a provision of the Criminal Code’s Article 368 forcing suspected officials to prove that their assets are legitimate violates the principle of the presumption of innocence.
Ukraine introduced the law in 2015 to meet a requirement of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and be able to receive badly needed loans from the lender. The IMF in 2015 authorized $17.5 billion in aid to Ukraine to support reforms.
The National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) said in a statement that the constitutional court’s ruling “is politically motivated and contradicts Ukraine's obligations on the ratified UN Convention against Corruption [and] its agreements with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.”
The agency said that about 65 corruption cases it is currently investigating and involving some $20 million will now be closed.
The court's ruling came two days after an investigative group in Ukraine made public the results of its investigation alleging that individuals close to President Petro Poroshenko's associates illegally enriched themselves by smuggling spare parts of military equipment from Russia.
The allegations, made just weeks before the March 31 presidential election, caused a public outcry.
One of the major presidential candidates, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, announced on February 26 that her Batkivshchyna party and other political parties had started a process for Poroshenko's impeachment.
Poroshenko said on February 27 that he will instruct his government to draft new legislation to punish corrupt officials and that the text will be submitted to parliament as soon as possible.
Western officials say corruption hurts Ukraine's chances of throwing off the influence of Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backs separatists whose war with Kyiv has killed about 13,000 people in eastern Ukraine.
With reporting by AP
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