Punishment of corrupt officials this year: no imprisonment, only fines
In Ukraine, courts handed down 814 rulings in corruption cases between January and April of this year, which is 27% fewer than during the same period last year, yet nearly twice as many as before the start of the full-scale war.
This is reported by OpenDataBot, citing the Unified Register of Corrupt Officials, according to Censor.NET.
Details
Nine out of ten cases this year involve financial control violations—that is, issues with tax returns, late submission of documents, or errors in reporting.
In fact, 742 such cases were heard by the courts during the first four months of 2026. This represents 91% of the total number of corruption cases this year.
In contrast, cases directly involving bribery account for only 6% of all rulings. Another 3% involve conflicts of interest.
93% of cases in 2026 were administrative. Of the 814 decisions, only 52 concerned criminal offenses, while 762 were administrative.
The NACP explains that this discrepancy is to be expected. There are fewer criminal corruption cases overall, and their investigation and trial take significantly longer than administrative proceedings.
It is noted that 2025 set a record for court rulings on corruption and corruption-related offenses: courts issued 4,086 rulings throughout 2025. This is 2.2 times more than in 2024.
Although the vast majority of sentences in 2025 also resulted in fines (97% of cases), the registry also included significantly harsher sentences. Last year, courts imposed actual prison terms, community service, restricted liberty, and probation.
The largest fine of 2025—over 1.24 million hryvnias—was imposed on a Kyiv-based lawyer who sold schemes to men to evade conscription.
For $15,000, he promised to help update the data in the TCC and arrange a fake job for the reservation.
Despite the scale of the scheme, the court limited its ruling to a fine and lifted the seizure of the Chevrolet Camaro, the apartment, the land, and over 1,255 square meters of commercial space.
In contrast, the harshest sentence—10 years in prison—was handed down to a sergeant in an assault company in the Sumy region. He stole and sold military optics worth over 4.5 million hryvnias, including thermal imagers and night-vision binoculars.
Investigators were able to return some of the equipment to the military, but the court ruled that the crime was particularly serious because it involved the misappropriation of Ukrainian Armed Forces property during wartime.
