Draft bill #10440-3 of February 12, 2024 

Cosponsors: a group of 14 MPs from the factions Holos, Batkivshchyna, and Servant of the People with Yaroslav Zhelezniak as the first signatory 

Status: sent for review to the Law Enforcement Committee 

Who is affected: businesses, the Bureau of Economic Security, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the National Police, the Security Service, prosecutors, other law enforcement agencies, and the Business Ombudsman Council 

Summary:  

  • it will be prohibited to entrust investigative or search actions to operational units of security agencies in the course of pretrial investigation of criminal cases under the BES jurisdiction 
  • within 24 hours after the court’s decision to refuse to arrest the property, prosecutors will be obliged to order the investigator to immediately and unconditionally return the temporarily seized property to the owner 
  • the BES and NABU will have an exclusive power to initiate the checks of financial and economic activity of state, communal, and private enterprises, institutions, and organizations and private entrepreneurs. Also, they will have the right to participate in the conduct of such checks 
  • the National Police and SSU will be removed from the list of state financial control bodies 
  • it will be allowed to submit appeals against the decisions, actions, or inaction of the investigator, detective, or prosecutor within ten days from the moment when a person found out or had an objective possibility to find out about the decision (not from the moment the decision was made) 
  • it will be mandatory to record the destruction of material evidence using audio and video recording. 

What is right:  

  • the exclusive jurisdiction of the BES over economic offenses will be strengthened 
  • the risk of power abuse by prosecutors will be decreased 
  • law enforcement agencies will no longer have powers they are not supposed to have. 

What is wrong:  giving the BES the right to conduct checks of economic entities will facilitate corruption risks since the Bureau performs the functions of control, operational and search activity, investigation, analysis, and special service. 

Alternative solution:  to reorganize the BEB into the Bureau of Financial Security, which will deal exclusively with issues of financial threats and abuses and not the entire economy of the state.