Draft bill #8235 of November 28, 2022 

Status: adopted in the first reading. The dedicated parliamentary committee has already prepared a comparative table for the second reading, so it will be possible to adopt the bill at the next parliamentary meeting 

Who is affected: investigators, prosecutors, suspects, defendants, criminals, lawyers, and judges 

Summary of the bill: 

  • amendments to the Criminal Code: 
    • typos and errors will be corrected 
    • penalties for some crimes will be clarified or changed. For example, it is proposed to punish violations of labor legislation that have caused grave consequences by imprisonment from two to five years instead of correctional labor 
    • a new offense will be introduced: fraud that have caused substantial damage while martial law is in effect. It will be punishable by a fine from ₴68 to 136 thousand or imprisonment from three to five years 
    • some crimes — such as illicit enrichment and delivery of a knowingly unfair sentence, judgment, ruling, or order by a judge, which the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional in February 2019 and June 2020 accordingly — will be removed from the Criminal Code 
  • in the Criminal Procedure Code, it will be stipulated that if a court can close a case due to the expiration of statutes of limitations, it must, at any stage of the proceedings, ascertain and consider the opinion of the defendant regarding the closure of the criminal proceedings. 

Why this is important: 

  • one of the amendments to the bill caused mixed responses in civil society. In amendment #16, MP Hryhorii Mamka proposed the following corrections regarding the crime of abuse of authority or office (Article 364 of the Criminal Code): 
    • cases where an official commits an offense for the benefit of third parties will not be recognized as a crime 
    • cases where damage pertains to only material losses will not be recognized as a crime 
  • representatives of the Anti-Corruption Action Center believe that this amendment could ruin criminal cases against Roman Nasirov, the former head of the State Fiscal Service. He is suspected of the abuse of power for the benefit of MP Oleksandr Onyshchenko in the case of Rotterdam+, where members of the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities allegedly adopted decisions for the benefit of oligarchs, and in the case regarding officials of Ukrnafta, who allegedly acted for the benefit of oligarchs 
  • lawyers argue that the amendment could also have positive effects. They complain about the ambiguous practice of the High Anti-Corruption Court regarding liability for abuse of power or office, misinterpretation of the concept of lost profit in criminal proceedings, and potential abuses on the part of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in similar cases 
  • for now, the amendment has been rejected, but it could be adopted during the vote in the second reading. 

What is right: the bill corrects some errors in the Criminal Code, removes some unreasonable penalties for individual offenses, and excludes provisions which the Constitutional Court has recognized as unconstitutional.