Illegal enrichment: Ukrainian officials concealed millions in their declarations

It has become known how much money Ukrainian officials made mistakes in their declarations. Thirty percent of the declarations contained errors worth almost two billion hryvnias.

This is evidenced by the data of the monitoring service Opendatabot.

According to the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, 1,246,435 declarations were filed by September 11, 2024. The number of corrected documents has almost doubled this year compared to last year.

As of mid-September, the total number of submitted declarations amounted to 1.2 million, which is 2.8 times higher than the figure for the same period in 2023 - 445 thousand. About 134 thousand, or 11% of declarations were corrected.

In 2024, the NACP started verification of 734 declarations, of which 392 have already been completed. Of the documents analyzed, 46% contained errors totaling UAH 1.856 billion, mainly due to incorrect amounts. The size of the errors ranged from minor to those exceeding 500 subsistence minimums.

In total, 30% of the audited declarations revealed errors amounting to UAH 1.808 billion, an average of UAH 15 million per declaration. In 16% of cases, the amount of errors amounted to an average of UAH 790 thousand per declaration, which is a total of UAH 47.3 million.

Errors not exceeding 100 subsistence minimums were found in every second declaration.

The main types of violations are as follows

• inaccurate data in the amount of up to 100 subsistence minimums: 54.1% of cases;
• inaccurate data exceeding 500 subsistence minimums: 30,4%;
• violations in the range of 100-500 subsistence minimums: 15,3%.

Only one declaration was without violations. In addition, 7 declarations showed signs of illicit enrichment totaling 146.3 million hryvnias, and in 8 documents, officials could not explain the origin of 30.1 million hryvnias.

Earlier in August, more than 34,000 cases of wage arrears were registered. Almost 2,000 companies had debts to their employees.

The leader among the southern regions in terms of the number of companies that owe their employees is Mykolaiv region - 797 companies in total. Odesa region came in second with 667 companies. Kherson region took third place, but didn't get far - 661 companies delayed salaries to their employees.

There are also 701,000 proceedings in Ukraine to recover debts for housing and utility services. Since the start of the full-scale war, debts have increased by 37%. At the end of last year, the Unified Register of Debtors already contained 659,684 utility debts. In six months, their number increased by 6.3%.

More than 22 thousand charitable organizations, despite the requirements of the law, have not submitted their financial statements for 2023 to the State Statistics Service. The organizations that most often forget to report on their finances are those involved in education and social assistance. The anti-rating also includes the regions of southern Ukraine - Mykolaiv, Odesa, and Kherson.

Анна Бальчінос