Help Ukraine win on the anti-corruption front too

For the first time since the House of Representatives came under Republican control following last year’s midterm elections, the Biden administration has asked Congress for supplemental wartime funding for Ukraine. Whereas security assistance should continue to be provided without any strings attached — Ukraine should only be expected to keep fighting to win against Russia — Congress should consider setting anti-corruption conditions that must be met by the Ukrainian government for it to receive budgetary aid and reconstruction assistance.

Conditioning non-security assistance on Ukraine’s continued delivery of anti-corruption reforms would be good politics and good policy. It’s a cost-free way to win over Republicans, safeguard U.S. tax dollars, and reinforce Ukrainians on the other front where they’re also fighting to win a generational struggle for a free and fair democracy: Ukraine’s anti-corruption front.

In terms of U.S. politics, the challenge is to win over as many as possible of the 57 Republicans who voted against the last Ukraine supplemental funding bill when its provisions were crafted by a Democratic-controlled House. Now part of a governing majority in the House, some of these Republicans will be looking for new provisions they can point to as evidence that this money is spent efficiently, safely and strategically — that this is anything but a “blank check.”

Fortunately, the same anti-corruption provisions that would help win over skeptical Republicans are also strategic policy moves that would fortify Ukraine against foreign and domestic corruption.

Since 2014 — when Ukrainians deposed a kleptocratic president whose election campaigns were bankrolled by agents of the Kremlin — Ukraine has built a more sweeping system of anti-corruption institutions than any country has ever erected within less than a decade. The backbone of Ukraine’s system is a handful of politically independent enforcement bodies known as the “specialized anti-corruption agencies,” which are collectively empowered with jurisdiction over the full process of accountability for grand corruption.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) investigates cases of high-level corruption before handing them off to the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), which prosecutes them in the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC). Ukraine’s Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) manages seized assets, while the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) administers disclosure systems and sets policy strategies.

If this sounds like an alphabet soup of esoteric bureaucracy, Vladimir Putin disagrees. On Feb. 21, 2022, three days before Putin launched his full-scale invasion, he gave a vitriolic speech naming several of these and other Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions before airing his grievances about their leadership selection processes and support from the United States. His words betrayed a granular knowledge of and bitter resentment toward Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions. Putin fears Ukraine’s anti-corruption progress because it strengthens the Ukrainian state, prepares Ukraine for Euro-Atlantic integration, and could even inspire Russians to overthrow their own despotic kleptocrat.

Ukraine had to create these agencies from scratch starting in 2014 because the country’s post-Soviet judicial system was so compromised by corruption that it was incapable of delivering accountability. The U.S. government and other donors like the IMF conditioned loans and other aid upon the establishment of the specialized anti-corruption agencies. The FBI lent Ukraine public corruption investigators and prosecutors to train new recruits rather than having to rehire Ukrainians who worked for the old corrupt enforcement bodies. The Ukrainian agencies maintain information sharing agreements with Western law enforcement agencies that help advance justice on both sides.

Ukraine’s specialized anti-corruption agencies have been remarkably productive during the war. In 2022, NABU and SAPO launched 456 investigations, served 187 target letters, and issued 54 indictments, including nine against lawmakers. The second half of 2022 brought more anti-corruption enforcement activity than the entire calendar years 2020 or 2021, following the appointment of a strong head of SAPO in July 2022. The cases were significant and complex, from the takedown of a criminal organization in Odesa to multiple investigations of companies owned by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. In May, NABU detained the head of the Supreme Court on suspicion of accepting bribes worth $2.7 million. New leaders were selected for NABU and the HACC.

But while this activity shows that Ukraine’s anti-corruption system is working well, these institutions constantly need additional resources and authorities. NABU requires independent wiretapping authorities and an in-house forensic examination unit so it doesn’t have to rely on other enforcement agencies that are subject to political influence. SAPO needs stronger operational independence. The new head of ARMA is a political operative who may have to be pressured to carry out promised reforms. All these agencies and the HACC need more staff.

Just as the specialized anti-corruption agencies were established with pressure and support from the United States and other aid providers, so too must Ukraine’s partners use leverage to insist upon the continued cultivation of these bodies. Because in a political system in which many lawmakers, bureaucrats, and other officials come under pressure from corrupt interests, even the most reformist government needs outside pressure to help it carry out its public mandate.

The supplemental funding bill offers a unique opportunity to renew U.S. pressure with anti-corruption conditions tied to non-security assistance such as U.S. loan guarantees, direct budgetary aid, and support for loans from the international financial institutions. These benefits should only be provided if the State Department periodically certifies that Ukraine is making progress on — and eventually completing — reforms such as improvements to the specialized anti-corruption agencies. This would also informally give Ukraine opportunities to concretely demonstrate its delivery of governance conditions that could shore up its readiness to join NATO at the summit in Washington next July.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions are as powerful as advanced military weapons in the country’s fight for independent sovereignty. But on both the military and corruption fronts, there remain many lands to liberate and enemies to vanquish before victory is assured. Thus, Congress should ease the political pathway toward additional security assistance by imposing anti-corruption conditions that back Ukrainian investigators, prosecutors and judges in their battles against oligarchs and corrupt officials. Ukrainian civil society would be grateful and Putin would have a conniption.

Josh Rudolph is the fellow for malign finance of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan transatlantic organization with the stated aim of countering efforts to undermine democratic institutions in the United States and Europe.