In early October, Ukraine's National Bureau of Investigation arrested Tetyana Kroupa, director of the regional medical and social expertise centre (MCEK) in Khmelnytsky, western Ukraine. This centre issues disability certificates enabling people to receive government pensions. Kroupa is suspected of illegal enrichment, fraud and money laundering. During a search in her flat, investigators find six million dollars. According to the Bureau of Investigation, the civil servant provided fake disability certificates to men to allow them to avoid military service. She has been remanded in custody, and her lawyer has announced her intention to contest the remand.
Photos of her flat – where a pile of cash could be seen spread out on a bed – have sparked a wave of indignation in Ukraine. Given that Kroupa had held her job for many years, one wonders why her activity had not raised a flag with the National Bureau of Investigation before. But the director of the MCEK is far from being the only person affected by the scandal. In addition to ordinary citizens, many prosecutors are also said to have obtained disability certificates. Yuriy Butusov, editor-in-chief of the media outlet “Censor.net”, has identified 51 prosecutors who have obtained this status in the Khmelnytsky region alone. Although prosecutors are not currently subject to mobilisation, this entitles them to additional benefits and social guarantees.
At least 51 prosecutors identified
“Based on their declarations, the total amount of pensions received by the 51 prosecutors identified with pensioner and invalid status is at least 54.1 million hryvnias (1.2 million euros),” writes the journalist on his Facebook page. “In reality, there is a network of common interests between local officials who act like a real criminal organisation: they support and cover for each other, own tens or hundreds of acres of land, buy any necessary decision, openly demand bribes and facilitate evading the military,” he adds, suggesting that local law enforcement agencies were protecting Kroupa.
Following revelations about these suspicious disabilities, journalists also discovered that serving prosecutors were claiming seniority bonuses for their years of service in courts. Under the legislation governing the public prosecutor's office, prosecutors who have been in post for more than ten years receive not only a salary, but also a bonus which represents between 60% and 90% of their salary.
This seniority bonus is indeed provided for by law, but raises ethical questions. For example, in 2023, a 42-year-old female prosecutor from Cherkassy in central Ukraine received a bonus of 785,000 hryvnias, or just over 17,000 euros, on top of her salary. The salary of the first deputy prosecutor of the Kirovohrad region, including various bonuses, amounts to one and a half million hryvnias, or around 33,500 euros a year. If he were awarded a seniority bonus, this amount would almost double.
Wave of resignations
On October 20, Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin promised a full-scale administrative investigation. He told journalists that prosecutors whose disability raised doubts would have to undergo a new assessment. He also announced the creation of a task force including international experts to establish measures to prevent such abuses.
The initial results of the survey, published by the Prosecutor General's Office, revealed that out of 8,467 prosecutors in Ukraine, 493 have a disability status. However, it remains to be determined which ones are fictitious. At the same time, Ukrainian media are revealing more information about bonuses and disabilities, establishing rankings of the largest allowances paid to prosecutors by the state.
On October 22, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council to examine the workings of the MCEKs and the abuse linked to disability certificates. At the end of the meeting, the president announced that these centres would be disbanded from January 1, 2025. He also stated that the Prosecutor General had to take political responsibility for the situation within the public prosecutor's offices.
Following this meeting, Kostin announced his resignation. “I fully support the position of president Volodymyr Zelensky: it is essential to cancel all illegitimate decisions on the granting of the disability status and the resulting pensions, to introduce clear legislative and organisational changes, and to take personal and political responsibility,” he said.
In the same breath, five heads of regional public prosecutor's offices and the director of a specialised public prosecutor's office offered to resign. All received increased bonuses for their seniority, awarded by court decision. These bonuses are legal, but the problem is that the disability status can increase their amount and speed up their awarding in the midst of a career. Kostin announced their resignations, and said they were the heads of the regional prosecutor's offices in Zaporizhzhia, Rivne, Ternopil, Kharkiv and Cherkassy, as well as the head of the prosecutor's office specialising in defence in the southern region.
Kostin's record
In Ukraine, the Prosecutor General is appointed and dismissed by the president with the approval of parliament. Kostin took office in July 2022, succeeding Iryna Venediktova. A member of Zelensky's team, Kostin was elected as a member of parliament in the 2019 elections under the banner of the presidential party, and chaired the parliamentary committee on legal policy. Before these political activities, he was a lawyer and co-founder of a law firm and the deputy chairman of the Odessa region's lawyers' council.
According to Andriy Borovyk, executive director of Transparency International Ukraine, Kostin has distinguished himself by his efforts to promote investigations into war crimes committed by the Russian military. “During Kostin's tenure as Prosecutor General, a progressive comprehensive plan to reform judicial bodies was developed,” writes Borovyk on his Facebook page, recalling that Kostin also supported the repeal of the “Lozovyi amendments”, changes to criminal procedural laws that had had a negative impact on preliminary investigations. “He actively promoted investigations into international crimes committed by Russians. But he has failed to achieve any real reform or at least internal clean-up,” he adds.
“People who are genuinely suffering from serious illnesses, including servicemen who have returned wounded from the front, are often unable to obtain the disability status because of artificial obstacles,” says Roman Kolyukhov, a lawyer with the Centre for the fight against corruption. “Meanwhile, prosecutors who work in comfortable conditions far from the front have managed to obtain this disability status. And when people saw a considerable pile of money found during the searches of the MCEK management and how it was all a total injustice, it caused great indignation.”
The promise of change?
According to the lawyer, after the scandal and the major media attention it caught, it was clear that changes were expected. “The first reaction to the administrative investigation was lukewarm: there was only a very brief statement. The next statement confirmed that a number of prosecutors did indeed have this disability status. It was obvious that the position of the Prosecutor General's office was being very weak, that's why it was clear that he would resign,” says Kolyukhov.
While he acknowledges that the prosecutor has set an example by not clinging to his job, he feels that at this stage there has not been any real justice in the case. “The society understands that after Kostin, another prosecutor could come along who could be even worse or simply the same, so it won't necessarily change the situation. In any case, this person remains under the control of the executive and the office of the president as well as the political elites who are in power,” analyses the lawyer.
The Centre for the fight against corruption is calling for a reform of the judiciary so that its heads are chosen transparently, through a competitive process. As to whether the resignation of the Prosecutor General would lead to a crisis of the judicial system, Kolyukhov disputes the idea. “It is unlikely to create a serious crisis because there is a principle of continuity in power, so there will be an interim Prosecutor General,” he says. But “if the Prosecutor General's office doesn't see that there are massive corruption schemes going on in certain regions to avoid mobilisation [at the front] while MCEK officials become millionaires in dollars and local prosecutors turn a blind eye to this, it's a huge crisis and its resolution begins precisely with this scandal and with the resignation of the Prosecutor General.”
The request for Kostin's resignation has now been submitted to parliament, which must accept it. By October 28, around ten other prosecutors had decided to leave. According to the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, 64 managers of medical-social commissions have been arrested, accused of providing fake disability documents to allow conscripts to avoid the army. The SBU has also announced that 4,106 disability certificates have already been cancelled.
