NABU and SAP use high-profile cases to strengthen their own political influence - expert
Kyiv • UNN
NABU and SAP use high-profile cases to strengthen their own political influence, an expert says.
The anti-corruption vertical has turned into a tool for collecting compromising material, controlling elites, and redirecting corrupt flows to transnational groups. NABU's resources are being spent on destabilizing the state apparatus and the military-industrial complex. Political expert Taras Zahorodnii wrote about this.
"For ten years of its existence, NABU and SAPO should have become the foundation of law and order in the country. However, as of 2026, we are observing the opposite process: the transformation of the anti-corruption vertical into a tool for collecting compromising material, controlling elites, and redirecting corrupt flows to transnational groups. Instead of a real fight against schemes, the bureau's resources are increasingly being spent on destabilizing the state apparatus and the military-industrial complex," he noted.
According to him, NABU's statistics are a verdict on the system: only 296 verdicts from the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) for all time, out of thousands of open proceedings, look like a statistical error. High-profile cases fall apart in courts for years due to procedural errors by detectives or deliberate delays, the expert noted.
He cited a number of the most high-profile examples of NABU cases that collapsed in court. The case of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Vsevolod Kniaziev has been stalled for the third year, Zahorodnii reported. Former ministers Volodymyr Omelyan and Andriy Pyvovarsky were persecuted for years for lawful management decisions, ultimately resulting in full acquittal by the court and confirmation of no claims from the state, he recalled. NABU's function, according to the expert, has shifted from justice to creating an atmosphere of fear that paralyzes the state apparatus.
"To stop this darkness, these bodies primarily need a complete change of composition," Zahorodnii concluded.
According to data from well-known lawyer Oleh Shram, 1681 individuals were entered into the register of corrupt officials for committing corrupt criminal offenses in 2025. Of these, 1144 promised or gave bribes, which constitutes 67.7% of the total; only 33 individuals (2%) were prosecuted for abuse of power or official position.
It is noteworthy that only 18 individuals were prosecuted under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code ("Embezzlement, misappropriation of property or seizure of it through abuse of official position – on a particularly large scale or by an organized group"), which is only 1% of the total, and under Article 368-5 of the Criminal Code ("Illegal enrichment") – none at all.
As reported earlier, NABU will receive 2.6 billion UAH in annual funding starting in January, while last year it returned only 680 million UAH to the budget. Without the Bureau, the Ukrainian budget would have an additional almost 2 billion UAH annually. In total, over 10 years of its existence, NABU has spent more than 10.6 billion UAH of Ukrainian taxpayers' money.