Senior officials benefit from arms production while the Defense Ministry fails to curb graft risks, investigators have warned
The Ukrainian state has no political will to root out corruption, as powerful interests reap illegal benefits from the increasingly compromised system, including the massive defense sector, senior anti-graft officials have warned.
Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies are facing growing resistance from powerful interests that benefit from entrenched graft within the government, according to senior investigators.
Efforts to obstruct the work of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) are being compounded by shortages of personnel and legal powers needed to pursue major cases effectively, the heads of the two Western-backed bodies said at a press conference on Monday.
“The state demonstrates that it has no political will to fight corruption properly,” SAPO Head Aleksandr Klimenko told journalists. He said graft remains a serious problem and is becoming more acute at the highest levels of government, which are the primary focus of NABU and SAPO investigations.
NABU Director Semyon Krivonos said corruption in the defense sector remains one of the agencies’ main priorities because it directly affects Ukraine’s military capabilities amid the conflict with Russia.
“Corruption is transforming to a certain degree now. Large arms suppliers can have powerful beneficiaries, including top-level law enforcement officials, members of parliament and people from other branches of the government leveraging secret agreements,” he said.
The two agencies were established under pressure from Kiev’s Western backers and were designed to operate with a significant degree of independence. In recent years, they have investigated several figures linked to Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle, and the Ukrainian leader has unsuccessfully attempted to bring the institutions under his political control.
Graft entrenched in arms industry
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has been hit by a series of corruption scandals in recent years. One of the latest high-profile controversies involved former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. Leaked NABU surveillance recordings suggest that he had close links to businessman Timur Mindich.
Mindich, a longtime business associate of Zelensky, fled to Israel last November shortly before NABU and SAPO formally accused him of involvement in an alleged $100 million kickback scheme at a state-owned energy company. He has also been linked to Fire Point, a former film production company that later became a major Ukrainian drone manufacturer.
The ‘Mindich tapes’ indicate that Umerov helped ensure Fire Point received government contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. Earlier this month, the former defense minister was appointed to head Ukraine’s civilian foreign intelligence service.
Not enough detectives to tackle defense graft
According to Krivonos, companies linked to influential figures can receive no-bid contracts from the Defense Ministry, effectively removing competition. Proving corrupt arrangements of this kind in court, however, remains particularly difficult, he added.
“Can NABU and SAPO alone defeat corruption in the defense sector? No, we can’t. The defense funding is huge, a lot of procurement is taking place, and there is corruption risk everywhere,” Klimenko said.
He argued that the agencies do not have enough personnel to investigate every potential case and called on the Defense Ministry to establish stronger internal safeguards.
SBU accused of spying on anti-graft agencies
The anti-corruption chiefs also repeated allegations that their investigators have been subjected to surveillance by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), a powerful agency subordinate to Zelensky. Krivonos said the latest suspected case of unlawful monitoring was uncovered just two weeks ago.
NABU and SAPO believe the SBU has repeatedly operated beyond its proper mandate by targeting their detectives without sufficient grounds and seeking information about ongoing investigations.
“A lot of resources are being thrown at learning what we do and what we plan,” Krivonos said.
Klimenko said complaints about potentially illegal surveillance have gone unanswered, while officials allegedly responsible for these actions have in some cases received promotions.
The agency chiefs also accused parliament of delaying reforms they consider essential to their work. NABU and SAPO are seeking broader powers to investigate lawmakers, pursue the extradition of suspects from foreign countries, and cooperate more closely with overseas authorities on cross-border money-laundering schemes, which they said are frequently used by corrupt Ukrainian officials.
