How Ukraine's Presidential Candidate Zelenskiy Plans to Fight Corruption

The headquarters of presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy unveiled the steps he wants to take to overcome corruption in Ukraine.

"We emphasize that it is not necessary to invent a bicycle in this area. It has long been known, what needs doing. But there was never the political will to do it,"  Zelenskiy's team’s post to Telegram reads.

Thus, the candidate’s HQ proposes to:

• Form anti-corruption bodies through independent international competition commissions;
• Cancel immunity;
• Establish an International Supreme Economic Court and deprive judges of their positions in the event of the adoption of unlawful decisions;
• Relieve the law enforcement agencies of improper functions (like initiating cases and investigating economic and financial crimes) and form them exclusively through an independent international competition commission;
• Decriminalize economic activity to the maximum, namely punish economically and administratively for economic violations, prosecute officials who make artificial claims to businesses;
• Increase the severity of punishment for civil servants by signing consent for voluntary deprivation of service and by imposing additional punishment in the form of confiscation of all property and a lifetime ban on holding state or local positions; impose a ban on judges' decisions on bail;
• Transfer the "state into smartphone" through the implementation of most business-related services online;
• Involve citizens as much as possible in exposing corruption through rewards;
• Initiate an appeal to Western law enforcement officers to initiate anti-corruption investigations against those Ukrainian corruptors, who were uncovered by the Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities.

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It should be noted that a number of these proposals cannot be implemented without corresponding parliamentary decisions. In particular: the abolition of parliamentary/judicial immunity, the creation of a new court, the decriminalization of economic activity, the change of powers of the law enforcement agencies, and the strengthening of the responsibilities of officials. All these require amendments to the current legislation. The president does not have such powers.