July 24, 2025

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s new draft bill aimed at restoring the independence of Ukraine’s top anti-corruption agencies was officially registered in Parliament on July 24.

Bill No. 13533 seeks to expand the powers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, or SAPO. It is intended to reverse changes introduced just two days earlier through the widely criticized law No. 12414.

According to lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak, the president’s proposal reinstates key legal provisions that had been stripped by the July 22 law. He also said the draft includes a safeguard against “Russian influence” over NABU and SAPO.

The bill’s explanatory note says the legislation is meant to reinforce the institutional independence of both agencies and “ensure reliable protection of their operations from the influence and interference of the aggressor state.”

Bill No. 13533 would also codify SAPO’s role as an agency that independently oversees investigations of crimes falling under NABU’s jurisdiction.

“The objective of this bill is to ensure public and international trust in Ukraine’s legal framework for anti-corruption efforts by enhancing the effectiveness of safeguards for institutional independence and upholding the principle of the inevitability of punishment,” the document states.

The draft also outlines new mechanisms to counter subversive and intelligence-gathering operations by foreign security services targeting employees of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies.

According to the explanatory note, the bill introduces additional preventive and counterintelligence measures to shield NABU and SAPO from possible interference by Russia.

Another major provision would ban other law enforcement agencies from carrying out pretrial investigations into crimes that fall under NABU’s jurisdiction. Exceptions would be allowed only if NABU is objectively unable to function or investigate during martial law.

Zheleznyak added that the bill proposes creating internal oversight units within NABU, SAPO, the Bureau of Economic Security, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State Bureau of Investigation, and the National Police. These units would operate based on a methodology approved by Ukraine’s SBU Security Service.

Under the draft, the SBU would also be required to conduct polygraph screenings at least once every two years for staff at these agencies who have access to state secrets — to detect possible activity in Russia’s interests.

The first such screenings must take place within six months of the bill’s enactment, Zheleznyak said.

Law No. 12414 and its implications

On July 22, Ukraine’s parliament passed bill No. 12414 in full — a measure Transparency International had previously slammed as an attempt to strip the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) of their independence.

The bill, whose full text was obtained exclusively by Radio NV, amends a draft law changing Ukraine’s Criminal Code. The amendments were introduced by MP Maksym Buzhanskyi from the ruling Servant of the People party.

Among other provisions, the law gives the prosecutor general new powers to:

• remove cases from NABU and assign them to other investigative bodies;
• act as the de facto head of SAPO and delegate SAPO prosecutors’ authority to others;
• issue binding written orders to NABU detectives;
• unilaterally close investigations into top officials.

SAPO’s procedural autonomy would also be significantly weakened, as the law:

• strips SAPO prosecutors of the power to assign jurisdiction to NABU in exceptional cases;
• blocks the SAPO head from resolving jurisdictional disputes over NABU-led cases;
• removes the SAPO head’s authority to amend appellate or cassation filings submitted by SAPO prosecutors.

Guillaume Mercier, a representative of the European Commission, said the EU is concerned about Ukraine’s recent actions involving NABU and SAPO.

On the evening of July 22, protests broke out in Kyiv and several other cities — including Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro, and Ivano-Frankivsk — in opposition to the bill’s passage.

Later, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the bill into law. In a video address published overnight on July 23, he insisted that NABU and SAPO would continue their work despite the new legislation. However, he said the country’s anti-corruption infrastructure must be “cleansed of Russian influence.”

https://english.nv.ua/nation/zelenskyy-submits-bill-to-restore-nabu-sapo-independence-after-july-rollback-law-50532318.html