The Economic Security Bureau declares its departure from punitive methods of dealing with business and has intensified its dialogue with the Business Ombudsman Council. However, it is still too early to say that the ESB has truly ceased to be a source of criminal pressure on entrepreneurs. The share of complaints against the Bureau has remained at 29% for several years in a row. This is evidenced by the response of the Business Ombudsman Council (BOC) to a request from UNN.
There is dialogue, but it is too early to assess the results
At the end of 2025, the Business Ombudsman Council and the Economic Security Bureau signed a memorandum of cooperation. In 2026, a joint Expert Group of the two institutions began operating. It is intended to become a platform for the prompt resolution of business problems related to the work or inaction of the ESB.
According to the Business Ombudsman Council, the group has already held two meetings. The issues discussed included the enforcement of court decisions, compliance with reasonable investigation time limits, the return of property seized during searches, and the proportionality of investigative actions.
The Council acknowledges that communication with the Bureau has improved since the Expert Group was established.
Institutionally, the dialogue has become more structured and regular. The Council welcomes the ESB's declared departure from punitive approaches in its work
However, the key word in this position is that the approach is so far merely "declared." The Council is not yet ready to confirm that the change in approaches has already taken place in practice.
At the same time, the ESB's reset is still ongoing, so it is currently too early to draw final conclusions about the practical results of these changes
Thus, the intensification of dialogue between the Bureau and the Business Ombudsman does not in itself yet mean that the problems in relations between the ESB and business have been resolved.
The share of complaints against the ESB is not decreasing
Statistics on business обращения to the Business Ombudsman Council do not yet demonstrate any noticeable improvement. In 2025, the Business Ombudsman Council received 129 complaints concerning law enforcement. Thirty-seven of them concerned the ESB — 29% of all such обращения. In 2026, the figure remained unchanged: of 83 complaints against law enforcement agencies, 24 concerned the ESB — again 29%.
Thus, despite the change in the Bureau's leadership, the beginning of its reset, and the new format of cooperation with the BOC, the share of complaints against the ESB has not yet decreased.
Moreover, the actual scale of the problems may be much greater. The Business Ombudsman Council itself emphasizes that, due to the limitations of its mandate, not every complaint by entrepreneurs concerning the actions of law enforcement agencies can be considered.
For example, the BOC cannot assess issues concerning the lifting of an asset seizure or the admissibility of investigative actions authorized by a court. Therefore, the Council's statistics do not cover all instances of interaction between businesses and the ESB.
A criminal case first, determination of tax arrears later?
The most telling complaints remain those concerning the ESB's approaches to investigating criminal offenses involving tax evasion.
The Business Ombudsman Council separately draws attention to cases in which such criminal proceedings are opened before the relevant tax liabilities have been agreed upon.
The BOC is also aware of a number of cases in which information was entered into the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations under Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine on the basis of analytical products prepared by the ESB, without a tax audit being conducted or properly completed.
The consequences of this approach are already becoming apparent in the courts. As the Council notes, the relevant materials "are often deemed improper evidence for confirming the existence of the elements of a criminal offense."
In other words, a business may come under criminal pressure even before the tax liability that investigators link to possible tax evasion has been finally established in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law. This may be an indication of pressure on entrepreneurs through the opening of criminal proceedings.
The ESB needs a complete reset and an audit
Recently, Director of the Economic Security Bureau Oleksandr Tsyvinskyi reported that 74% of the heads of the Bureau's central office and territorial offices had failed the certification. According to him, the leadership will be overhauled. However, experts interviewed by UNN believe that, to achieve an effective result, all employees of the law enforcement agency need to undergo recertification.
In addition, the next step after the agency's overhaul should be an audit of criminal proceedings, especially those in which businesses report pressure or abuses.
The agency's overhaul is also necessary to attract international investors. Yaroslav Zhelezniak, deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, stated that unjustified investigative actions are currently the main barrier to investment in Ukraine.
It is worth noting that this same committee had previously sharply criticized the work of the Economic Security Bureau following its review of the report for 2025.
Parliamentarians were dissatisfied not only with the quality of the reporting; certain figures presented also raised doubts about their accuracy. The lawmakers noted the low efficiency of the ESB's work, pointing out that, of the nearly 6.9 thousand criminal proceedings investigated by the ESB in 2025, suspicions were announced in only 12.9% of cases, while 13.1% of the cases, or 904 criminal proceedings, were referred to court.
Moreover, in the opinion of committee members, the effectiveness of some units cannot be assessed at all.
Obviously, for the new format of cooperation between the ESB and the Business Ombudsman Council not to remain merely a discussion platform, its performance should be assessed using specific indicators: the number of complaints settled, court decisions implemented, cases involving the return of seized property, shorter investigation periods, and a reduction in the number of unjustified investigative actions.