On 2 January 2025, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine registered Draft Law No. 12374 ‘On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On the National Agency of Ukraine for Finding, Tracing and Management of Assets Derived from Corruption and Other Crimes” regarding guarantees of independence and strengthening of institutional capacity’
As stated in the explanatory note, the draft law was submitted to meet the requirements of the Ukraine Facility. We have already mentioned these requirements earlier.
The draft law proposes to strengthen independence by defining the procedure for selecting the Head of the National Agency for Asset Recovery and Management (ARMA), the procedure for selecting ARMA employees, and by establishing the mandatory independent external assessment of ARMA's activities and the annual external audit of ARMA's activities.
Specific aspects relate to the regulation of the temporary management of seized assets, ARMA's internal control units, and the functioning of the Public Oversight Council under ARMA.
The ILI experts analysed the provisions of the draft law and drew attention to the following comments to the draft law
- Failure to comply with the Ukraine Facility's requirement to transfer assets into management.
- An unbalanced approach to the formation of competition commissions for the selection of ARMA employees.
- Excessive discretion in assessing whether a candidate meets the criteria of integrity and professional competence.
- Discretionary influence of the Head of the ARMA on the early termination of powers of members of the competition commission for the selection of ARMA employees.
- Unclear definition of certain guarantees of ARMA's independence.
For more details on the identified observations, please click here